Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

THAMES BARRIER AND FLOOD
PREVENTION BILL

BATH SIDE BAY DEVELOPMENT BILL

LONDON TRANSPORT BILL

ESSEX RIVER AUTHORITY BILL

GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (GENERAL
POWERS) BILL

LIVERPOOL CORPORATION BILL

SELNEC (MANCHESTER CENTRAL AREA RAILWAY &C.) BILL

Lords Amendments considered and agreed to.

PORT TALBOT CORPORATION BILL [Lords]

As amended, considered.

To be read the Third time.

ANGLESEY MARINE TERMINAL BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Order for Third Reading read.

To be read the Third time upon 17th October at Seven o'clock.

BRITISH TRANSPORT DOCKS BILL

Ordered,
That in the case of British Transport Docks Bill Standing Order 208 (Notice of Consideration of Lords Amendments) be suspended and that the Lords Amendments be now considered.—[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Lords Amendments considered and agreed to.

DUNDEE EXTENSION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL (By Order)

Order for Third Reading read.

To be read the Third time tomorrow.

Oral Answers to Questions — SOCIAL SERVICES

Supplementary Benefits (Capital Disregards)

Mr. Clinton Davis: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will now consider increasing the amount of savings which can be disregarded for the purpose of determining eligibility for payments of supplementary benefits; and if he will make a statement.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Paul Dean): We intend to review the amount of capital disregarded in assessing supplementary benefit at an appropriate time, but I cannot yet say when that will be.

Mr. Davis: Is not the Minister aware that it is now a number of years since capital disregards were considered, that the value of savings has eroded considerably due to inflation, and that he should be more specific than he has been if some comfort is to be given to those who are entitled to supplementary benefit?

Mr. Dean: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's point. Equally I am sure that he will appreciate that this has to be balanced along with all the other priorities, especially increasing the rates of benefits for those actually in receipt of benefit.

Mr. Norman Lamont: Is my hon. Friend aware that that is an extremely disappointing answer? Ought not the disregards to be increased automatically at the same time as benefits? How can my hon. Friend expect people to save for their old age when they are required to run down small capital sums with the result that they are no better off than those who have not bothered to save?

Mr. Dean: We want to encourage thrift. That is why a disregard is available. Equally, we cannot ignore capital resources where they exist. I remind my hon. Friend that the whole value of an owner-occupied house is disregarded and that people can have to up to £800 capital and still be eligible.

Mr. Robert C. Brown: Is the Minister aware that I share the disappointment expressed by the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Norman Lamont) at his reply? I think that the whole House will be disappointed that the Minister does not see fit to make the review. When he does make it, will he give massive publicity to the total amount of the disregard, since a great many old people do not apply for supplementary benefit because they think they have a bob or two above the limit?

Mr. Dean: That is a slightly different point, but we are anxious to continue, and intend to continue, the publicity arrangements with a view to everybody who is entitled to those benefits claiming them.

Invalidity Pensions

Mr. John Page: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what proportion of invalidity pensioners he estimates are receiving early retirement pensions or sick pay in respect of their employment.

The Secretary of State for Social Services (Sir Keith Joseph): I regret that the information asked for is not available.

Mr. Page: It is difficult for me to thank my right hon. Friend for his informative answer, as I was hoping to be able to do. Will my right hon. Friend continue to seek ways in which those who have a disability may receive earlier retirement pensions through their occupational schemes?

Sir K. Joseph: I should like to earn my hon. Friend's gratitude. He will be glad to know that we have a research programme under way which will give us a great deal more information about the financial position of invalidity beneficiaries.

Mr. John Hannam: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services to what extent, either before or after the publication

of his White Paper "Strategy for Pensions", he has had discussions with organisations representing occupational pension schemes about the practicability of requiring such schemes to include an invalidity pension as a condition of recognition; and which organisations considered it to be impracticable.

Sir K. Joseph: This was not discussed because, accepting as we did that there are limits to the requirements that schemes can reasonably be expected to meet, we regarded provision for widows and some protection against inflation as of greater priority.

Mr. Hannam: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is deep concern at the lack of provision for the disabled in the White Paper "Strategy for Pensions"? Will he carry out the closest consultations with the organisations representing occupational pension schemes, especially those which already make provision for earnings-related invalidity pensions? Is my right hon. Friend aware that the cost of such schemes already in operation is very low—only 1½ per cent. extra—and that in most European and Scandinavian countries earnings-related invalidity schemes are already in operation with the State scheme?

Sir K. Joseph: Yes. I hope the trend will grow. I hope my hon. Friend is aware that the public service schemes are setting a good example in this sphere.

Mrs. Castle: While I am as anxious as the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) to see an improvement in the standard of occupational pensions schemes and a far higher standard being insisted upon by the Government than we have had any sign of yet, may I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware that the nub of the trouble is that the Government are setting such a bad example in "Strategy for Pensions" where, as the Disablement Income Group has pointed out, there is no effective provision for the disabled because there is no provision for an earnings-related invadility pension?

Sir K. Joseph: First, I hope that the right hon. Lady will shortly recover from the disability to her arm from which she is suffering so elegantly. Secondly, I think that both the right hon. Lady and


the House will agree that the country as a whole has a long way to make up in proper treatment of the disabled. While this Government have started to make substantial inroads on past neglect by the attendance allowance and the invalidity package, there is a long way to go, and it may not be possible to go as fast as some admirable people, such as the Disablement Income Group, want us to go.

Mrs. Castle: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for his good wishes towards myself, may I point out that although I am temporarily incapable of delivering a right upper cut, I can still deliver a straight left, and that which I have just delivered seems to have knocked him out.

Mr. Molloy: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the total weekly outgoings on national insurance benefits, excluding attendance allowances, currently payable to invalidity pensioners; what is his estimate of the total weekly earnings such persons would be receiving if they were not incapacitated; and what proportion the former bears to the latter.

Mr. Dean: The current cost of national insurance invalidity benefit is about £3¼ million a week. The information is not available on which to base an estimate of what the earnings of invalidity pensioners might be if they were able to work.

Mr. Molloy: Surely if we are to make some assessment of the grave problems afflicting the disabled, the Department should try to work out these facts and figures. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the other part of his reply. Does it not confirm that to be disabled means that one has to suffer additional burdens economically as well as in every other way and that the progress we are making, welcome though it is, is not nearly fast enough to give the disabled a fair and just deal?

Mr. Dean: The Government and, indeed, the whole House are committed to making up for the slow start that this country made in providing for civilian disability. I think the hon. Gentleman will recognise that four new allowances have been introduced in the last two years in this respect, and that is only a start.

Mr. Alfred Morris: May I press the hon. Gentleman on the need to provide the information requested at the earliest possible date? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that his right hon. Friend may at least earn the deferred gratitude of his hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. John Page) if he provides the information asked for by his hon. Friend at the earliest possible date?

Mr. Dean: Yes. We certainly intend to make available as much information as possible, because that helps to improve knowledge and enables responsible pressures to assist in this area.

Mr. Ashley: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what proportion of invalidity pensioners are currently receiving supplementary benefit in addition to invalidity benefit.

Mr. Dean: At November, 1971, the latest date for which information is available, nearly 30 per cent. of the 400,000 people receiving invalidity benefit were also in receipt of supplementary benefit.

Mr. Ashley: Will the Minister confirm that the following shocking statement is correct: that wealthy disabled people are allowed to retain their invalidity allowance whereas poor disabled people have it grabbed back from them by the Government if they are dependent on supplementary benefit? If that is true, what does the Minister propose to do about it?

Mr. Dean: With respect, the hon. Gentleman has not got it right. Where there are special needs they can be and, indeed, are dealt with within the supplementary benefits scheme. The scheme responds to individual needs. In the case of the chronic sick, where there are special additional expenses they can be and are met under the scheme as it is.

Mr. O'Malley: The hon. Gentleman must not try to dodge the issue like that. The facts of the situation, which I have checked recently, are that the vast majority of the 30 per cent. of people receiving invalidity allowance find that their supplementary benefit is reduced by exactly the amount of the invalidity allowance. How can the hon. Gentleman defend that?

Mr. Dean: I am saying that the combination of the invalidity allowance and the supplementary benefits scheme responds and will continue to respond to the special needs of the chronic sick.

Sir B. Rhys Williams: Will my hon. Friend confirm that when positive tax credits are introduced the blind person's allowance, which is available only to better-off blind people, will be available to all?

Mr. Dean: I must ask my hon. Friend to await the Green Paper on the future of the tax credit arrangements, which will be coming along fairly soon.

Mr. Alfred Morris: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services when he intends to announce plans for providing earnings-related invalidity pensions in Great Britain.

Mr. Dean: I am not satisfied that provision for disability in the State scheme would best be developed on these lines.

Mr. Morris: May I press the Minister on the powerful supplementary question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle)? Why on earth cannot the Government give a lead on earnings-related invalidity pensions? Moreover, will the hon. Gentleman give a definite assurance that he will have full and meaningful consultations with the Disablement Income Group on this deeply important matter?

Mr. Dean: It is fair to say that the Government, as employers, have given a lead in the public service schemes which make provision for this, but we have to consider in the first place in the National Insurance Scheme benefits which may mature immediately, and it is for that reason that the first priority is being given to those which give assistance to people who are sick and disabled now, rather than to those who will be sick and disabled some years in the future.

Mr. Kinsey: Is my hon. Friend aware that earnings-related schemes would not be of much use in certain cases, particularly to disabled married couples at work in sheltered employment who, in many cases, are worse off going to work?

Mr. Dean: I am obliged to my hon. Friend. One of the points which DIG has properly put to us over the years is

that of giving more help for disabled housewives and those who have never been able to work. Neither of those categories would be included in any earnings-related scheme depending on the ability to work.

Mr. Morris: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask the Minister to complete his reply to my supplementary question about consultations with DIG?

Mr. Boscawen: Whilst agreeing that the first priority of the State is to see that severely disabled people get all possible benefits, may I ask my hon. Friend whether he agrees that we must push ahead and see that those within two or three years of retirement receive some disability benefit, because they are left out of the scheme at present?

Mr. Dean: I am much obliged to my hon. Friend for his statement, which again emphasises the need to assist those who are either retired or disabled now.
I assure the hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Alfred Morris) that my right hon. Friend, the Department and I are in the closest touch with DIG on this and other matters.

Napsbury Mental Hospital

Mr. Raphael Tuck: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether as a result of his consideration of the case of the death of Mrs. Green in Napsbury Mental Hospital, he has now decided to hold a full-scale inquiry into conditions there.

Sir K. Joseph: As the hon. Member knows from my recent letter, I have decided, after consultation with the North-West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board, to arrange for an independent professional investigation into medical and nursing practices on certain wards at Napsbury Hospital.

Mr. Raphael Tuck: I have not yet received the right hon. Gentleman's letter. What is against his having a full-scale inquiry on the lines of the Whittingham Hospital inquiry? It can only be beneficial. If the nurses have been using only reasonable force to restrain violent patients, they should be cleared. If, on the other hand, they have been getting annoyed and cuffing patients indiscriminately, something should be done about it. In either


case, it will be beneficial to have a full-scale inquiry.

Sir K. Joseph: The fact is that the rather serious number of complaints concerning Napsbury Hospital over recent times have been almost entirely connected with a small number of wards. That is why, rather than distract and divert the work of the whole hospital, about the vast majority of which there have been no complaints, I have decided to have an investigation made into the wards concerned.

Dr. Stuttaford: Does my right hon. Friend understand that everybody concerned with medicine in this country is grateful for the acknowledgement which he shows that conditions in mental hospitals are rather less than satisfactory? Does he realise that this situation will not be improved until we have adequate nursing staff, adequately paid, in adequate buildings?

Sir K. Joseph: Yes. I should like to take this opportunity, in replying to my hon. Friend, to pay tribute to the devotion and zeal, in the interests of the patients, of the overwhelming majority of doctors and nurses involved.

Posters and Leaflets

Mr. McCrindle: asked the Secretary of State for Social Security what arrangements his Department makes to the availability of his Department's posters and leaflets at main and sub-post offices.

Mr. Dean: The Post Office undertakes to distribute leaflets and posters to all Crown and sub-post offices and to keep stocks available. The Department also pays for poster displays in Crown post offices.

Mr. McCrindle: Has my hon. Friend seen a recent survey which revealed that very often sub-post offices are better stocked than main post offices? Will he engage in duscussions with the Post Office authorities to see that not only are the main leaflets from his Department available but that wherever possible posters are on display, because visiting the post office is the only way in which many people can become aware of the benefits to which they may be entitled?

Mr. Dean: The Post Office does a massive job of distribution and display for us—about 18 million leaflets a year. But I take my hon. Friend's point and I assure him that because of the weaknesses which exist in some areas we are discussing the situation with the Post Office in the hope of seeking an improvement.

Psychiatric Accommodation (South Tyneside)

Mr. Conlan: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what proposals he has for increasing the amount of psychiatric accommodation on South Tyneside.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Michael Alison): It is our policy in redeveloping psychiatric services to bring them closer to the population served. The Regional Hospital Board's long-term plan is to base the hospital services for the mentally ill on psychiatric departments in Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead and South Shields General Hospital, each containing in-patient, day-patient and out-patient facilities sufficient for the populations served by these general hospitals. Future plans for services for the mentally handicapped are at present being considered jointly by the hospital board and the local authorities.

Mr. Conlan: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that reply. Does he recognise that South Tyneside is inadequately served by the excellent hospital at St. Mary's Stannington? Recently a lady who attempted to commit suicide by throwing herself off the Tyne bridge on three occasions on the same evening was refused admittance to St. Mary's because of overcrowding. Therefore, is not there a case for bringing forward the plans for a psychiatric unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the short term rather than the long term?

Mr. Alison: I am aware of the particular case in relation to St. Mary's Hospital, about which representations are being considered. As the hon. Gentleman will have learned from my answer, because of the difficulties of distance and separation we are trying to bring the facilities of the South Shields and the Queen Elizabeth Hospitals forward as rapidly as resources permit in order to bring them nearer home.

Population

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services in which year, on current trends, the population of the United Kingdom will begin to fall; and in which year it will fall below replacement rate.

Sir K. Joseph: I am advised by the Registrar-General that both current numbers of births and recent evidence about future intentions on family size indicate fertility levels above replacement rate. On this basis, projections of the size of the population show an upward trend over the medium and longer term.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Has not the birth rate already begun to decline? Confessing some interest in the matter as one who may be called the anti-social father of six, may I ask my right hon. Friend for an assurance that his Department will not lend itself to the fashionable death-wish propaganda against the family of more than two children, and also that such families will not be discriminated against in the future through withholding social benefits?

Sir K. Joseph: My hon. Friend and I are together responsible for no fewer than 10 children, but questions on population policy are for my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council.

Dr. Summerskill: Will the right hon. Gentleman take this opportunity to tell the House what stage has been reached in the Government's review of the family planning services? In view of the proposed reorganisation and integration of the National Health Service, will he make a statement about the rôle which the family planning services will play in the overall structure?

Sir K. Joseph: I hope to be in a position to make a statement on the review of the family planning services later this year.

Mr. Stokes: Is my right hon. Friend not aware that the best form of population control which this country requires and wants is strict control of immigration?

Sir K. Joseph: I must repeat that all questions on such subjects are not for me.

Mr. Pardoe: I recognise that responsibility for population policy is not within the right hon. Gentleman's orbit, but may I ask whether his Department has carried out any investigation into what would be the likely effect on the size of families if we were to limit family and tax allowances to the first two or three children.

Sir K. Joseph: No such inquiries have been made.

Widows

Mr. Eadie: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he is satisfied with the administration of his local offices in assisting and explaining their entitlements coming under the jurisdiction of his Department to recently bereaved widows; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Dean: Claims from widows are dealt with sympathetically and given priority in my Department's local offices. Information about the benefits to which a widow may be entitled is given by the Register when her late husband's death is recorded.

Mr. Eadie: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that I am satisfied with the expedition and fullness of the information which he gave me about a case that I put to him? Would he like to reaffirm to the House that where cases of administrative oversight are drawn to his attention his Department will act with similar expedition?

Mr. Dean: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he said, and I apologise for the error that was made. That was a complicated case concerning an injury which went back to well before the industrial injuries scheme. We consider these cases very sympathetically, and the Registrar helps, too. He makes available our leaflet which gives information about the death grant and also the widow's benefit. If widow's benefit may be payable the Registrar issues one free copy of the death certificate, and this incorporates a simple form on which the widow may indicate that she wishes to claim widow's benefit and/or death grant.

Doctors' Lists (London)

Mr. Lipton: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services why the number of patients on doctors' lists in


inner London exceeds by over half a million the total population of inner London; and what action he is taking to remedy this discrepancy.

Sir K. Joseph: This is mainly because patients' names sometimes remain on doctors' lists after they have moved away from the area. The Inner London Executive Council is supplementing the normal checks by special action, including writing to verify the registration particulars of all patients who have been on the registers for more than six months, except where these particulars have been recently confirmed in some other way. Something like three million letters will be needed, so this is a lengthy task.

Mr. Lipton: Is this not a quite crazy and indefensible state of affairs? How many thousands of pounds have been poured into the pockets of doctors at the taxpayers' expense in respect of this vast number of ghost patients?

Sir K. Joseph: The problem of keeping pace with patients who move from one practice to another without notifying the executive council has been with us ever since the beginning of the National Health Service. I hope that the current discussions between the BMA and my Department, and the check to which I have referred, will bring about some improvement.

Supplementary Benefits (Industrial Disputes)

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what was the total cost to public funds of supplementary benefits paid to those involved in industrial disputes and their dependants during such disputes and after return to work in the first seven months of 1972.

Sir K. Joseph: Approximately £6·9 million.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: As the strike subsidy is now running at a rate between two and three times that prevailing prior to the passage of the Social Security Act, 1971, is there not some urgency to my right hon. Friend's review of the workings of the Act? Will he give a progress report on that review and indicate when if will be completed?

Sir K. Joseph: It is true that the rate is now running at one and a half times the rate in the first seven months of last year. But 94 per cent. of the supplementary benefits payment payable this year to the dependants of strikers and to strikers was accounted for by a single strike, the miners' strike. Certainly the Government regard the review to which my hon. Friend refers as urgent, but we also regard it as extremely important to get the balance of the decision right.

Mr. Leslie Hackfield: Will the Secretary of State put some of the complaints made by the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) in perspective? Will he do his best to put in proper perspective the recent remarks of the hon. Gentleman about the advice which was given by the Claimants Union in Coventry, in that this was advice which was not endorsed by the Transport and General Workers Union, the union concerned?

Sir K. Joseph: Certainly the recent inflammatory leaflet in Coventry was promptly disowned by the trade union concerned. But my hon. Friend's disquiet is entirely justified, and while it is necessary to keep this whole subject in proportion, it is nevertheless entirely right for the Government to try to get the right balance between the interests of the public as a whole and the interests of the families of those who have voluntarily withdrawn their labour.

Mrs. Knight: Is my right hon. Friend aware that my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) has a great deal of public sympathy on his side? There is very strong public feeling on this matter. Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that a man's wife and children should be that man's responsibility and that if he wishes to strike the State ought not to permit him to ditch his responsibilities, in the way that many such men do?

Sir K. Joseph: I have indicated my sympathy with the worry expressed by both my hon. Friends. Nevertheless, we must get the balance of decision right. I hope that the whole House will understand that the relatively simple solutions which are often peddled do not always bear close examination.

Mr. O'Malley: Is the Secretary of State aware that any disquiet which the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) may feel on this subject is as nothing to the disquiet felt on the Opposition benches as a result of the industrial chaos which the general policies of the present Government have produced? Has not the level of supplementary benefit paid in the first seven months of this year been caused by precisely the policies put forward by the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for South Angus? Would not a way of cutting down on such benefits be for the Government to rethink the whole of their industrial relations policy, including the scrapping of the Industrial Relations Act?

Sir K. Joseph: I do not believe that the very nearly indiscriminate support of the Opposition Front Bench and their hon. Friends of almost every wage claim and industrial dispute does the country any good or, indeed, does their interests any good.

Sir B. Rhys Williams: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that when family allowances are extended to the first child this may make a significant increase in the amount of family benefit available which is indpendent of the circumstances of the breadwinner?

Sir K. Joseph: I am sorry to rebuff my hon. Friend and his enthusiasm. But the Green Paper on the tax credit scheme is promised for later this year. I must ask him and the House to await it.

Mr. Dunn: When talking about inflammatory statements, is the Secretary of State aware that a recent decision made in Merseyside has not helped to ease the situation? The interpretation of paragraph 27 of Schedule 2 of the Ministry of Social Security Act, 1966, which his Department has found convenient to operate, is so rigid that it is causing aggravation where aggravation is not required?

Sir K. Joseph: I think that the House will acquit me of trying to shelter behind anyone else, but the Supplementary Benefits Commission is an independent body. It is up to the Commission to interpret the legislation under which it operates.

Emergency Casualty Service (London)

Mr. Nigel Fisher: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many hospitals in the central area of London provide an emergency casualty service each night.

Mr. Alison: Thirty-four, in the inner London area.

Mr. Fisher: Is my hon. Friend aware that on the evening of Friday, 21st July, there was not even a nurse or a receptionist available at the Westminster Hospital to decide which of the casualties waiting in the queue were in need of urgent attention, and that no doctor was available at either Westminster Hospital or St. Thomas's Hospital until after a two to three-hour wait? Some of the casualties needed urgent attention. Is not this evidence of a badly organised hospital service which is in need of investigation?

Mr. Alison: Some of the 34 hospitals I have mentioned have on occasion had to restrict their night service because of shortage of beds or of staff. The case which my hon. Friend has brought to the notice of the House is serious and I shall investigate it.

Sir Gilbert Longden: How many hospitals are not equipped to provide this service? Could not some method of announcing which are and which are not so equipped be adopted?

Mr. Alison: That is a rather general question, and my hon. Friend has a Question on the Order Paper about his second point. I shall see whether I can write to him about the first point when I have studied it more carefully.

Mr. Molloy: Is not part of the answer drastically to overhaul the conditions of employment of nurses and the younger doctors manning our hospitals? I know that the Under-Secretary is very much concerned about this matter. Does not he consider that there ought to be a speeding-up of this examination to improve recruitment and, therefore, to alleviate the situation we are discussing?

Mr. Alison: One of the difficulties is the serious problem of career prospects for young doctors in accident and emergency departments. We have made progress on this matter by securing the


appointment of 32 consultant posts in this specialty.

Mr. Fell: My hon. Friend is obviously aware of the great concern all over the country, particularly in towns served by only one hospital, at the serious nature of the deficiencies of the emergency casualty services in many hospitals. Therefore, if there is no easy way of solving this problem quickly, will he set up a committee to sift the problem?

Mr. Alison: There are serious difficulties. The progress I have mentioned, the appointment of consultants, is a step in the right direction. My hon. Friend will appreciate that in many cases local general practitioners can play an important part in helping to meet local emergencies.

Mr. Russell Kerr: Is the Minister aware that there has been widespread discontent on the part of junior hospital doctors for some years? Is he prepared at least to order a departmental inquiry to see whether something can be done particularly about their conditions of employment in relation to those of senior members of the medical profession?

Mr. Alison: That supplementary question goes very much wider than the ambit of accident and emergency departments. But I am aware of the very serious problems of career prospects in this sector, which we are looking into.

Family Poverty

Mr. Meacher: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he is satisfied with the achievements to date of his policies to alleviate family poverty; and if he will make a statement.

Sir K. Joseph: I am not satisfied, but our measures have certainly provided substantial additional help to poor families and we shall not relax our efforts for further improvement.

Mr. Meacher: Is the Secretary of State aware that last year stockbrokers took £300 million in profits and that shareholders with large unearned incomes got a £300 million tax gift from the Inland Revenue while poor families got precisely £7 million in family income supplement? When will the right hon. Gentleman have the courage and realism to admit that family income supplement is nothing but

a means-tested con trick to salve weak Tory consciences?

Sir K. Joseph: The two successive increases in the tax threshold which my right hon. Friend has introduced—first in 1971 and then in 1972—have put hundreds of millions of pounds back into the pockets of the lower wage earners and must be taken into account as the main contribution to help hard-pressed families. What the hon. Gentleman does not seem to realise is that the levels of tax today on the higher incomes are higher than in nearly any other country and that the confiscatory levels of tax on higher incomes which the Labour Government operated did not enable them to help the poor nearly as much as we are helping the poor.

Mr. Farr: Is my right hon. Friend aware that where the family income supplement scheme is operating with a certain amount of success there have been a number of cases in which a very long delay has cropped up before an application is attended to? Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that applications for family income supplement are receiving and will receive more rapid attention?

Sir K. Joseph: This is not a complaint that I have had often, and I hope my hon. Friend will send me details, because the centralisation of this service should provide a rapid response.

National Health Service (Ancillary Workers)

Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what plans he now has to improve the rates of pay of ancillary workers within the National Health Service and to expedite wage negotiations in this sector.

Mr. Alison: The current agreement of the Ancillary Staffs Council runs until December; negotiations for revised rates of pay are expected to begin in September.

Mrs. Oppenheim: Does my hon. Friend agree that the machinery for negotiations within the Health Service is extremely ponderous and that ancillary workers on the lowest rate of pay are receiving what by any standards is very poor pay? Is my hon. Friend aware that


these workers have refused to go on strike out of consideration for the patients in the hospitals in which they serve? Will my hon. Friend show these ancillary workers similar consideration?

Mr. Alison: There is no doubt that ancillary workers are amongst the lower-paid workers. The 1971 pay settlement increased the wages bill by 7·6 per cent. Another wage claim is presently expected, about which I should not comment at present.

Mr. Carter-Jones: Is the Under-Secretary aware that unless the ancillary services are properly manned—that is, radiographers, occupational therapists, speech therapists, physiotherapists and nurses, all of whom are very important to the functioning of a realistic Health Service—there cannot be a fully staffed and effective Health Service? To secure this, realistic rates of pay should be given to these people now to increase recruitment for the future.

Mr. Alison: I fully support the hon. Gentleman's exposition of the vital part played by the various ancillary workers, of whom there are many different categories. I have no doubt that realism is present on both sides in the negotiations which take place in the Whitley Councils.

Mr. Ashley: Is the Under-Secretary aware that some of the rates of pay which were referred to by the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mrs. Sally Oppenheim) are quite shocking and that, far from the units being fully staffed, some people are leaving the service because of the rates of pay? As the Prime Minister has expressed great interest in the lower paid in his discussions with the Trades Union Congress, will the Government take action on this very important point?

Mr. Alison: I have conceded, regretfully, that ancillary workers are amongst the lower-paid workers, but I remind the hon. Gentleman of the substantial increases accorded in 1971, and no doubt a claim will be made presently for 1972 by the trade union concerned.

Accident Departments (Closure)

Mr. Adley: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many accident

departments in England have been temporarily closed in the last two years due to staff shortage or other causes.

Mr. Alison: This information is not collected centrally and is therefore not available. To obtain it would require a special survey covering the whole of the National Health Service.

Mr. Adley: Is my hon. Friend aware that there is considerable anger and frustration in East Bristol about the recent closure of the casualty unit at Cossham? Following the points raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Surbiton (Mr. Nigel Fisher) and for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) and the answer which my hon. Friend gave, would it not be a good idea if he studied the national pattern? Is there not some evidence that, where regional hospital boards are unable to obtain the necessary satisfaction about the reasons for closing casualty units, they seem to be going out of their way to find reasons, thus depriving a large number of people of an adjacent casualty service?

Mr. Alison: My hon. Friend came to see me to talk about this matter. I hope that he thought that our talk was constructive. My hon. Friend will remember that Cossham got through no fewer than 10 casualty officers in the course of a few months. This was due to the very real problems of career prospects for younger doctors in casualty and emergency services.

Dr. Summerskill: I recognise the importance of career prospects, but does the Under-Secretary agree that it would be desirable to appoint part-time casualty officers if there are general practitioners willing to serve? Will he bear in mind that many married women doctors would welcome a suitable appointment in an accident department?

Mr. Alison: I take the hon. Lady's point about part-time doctors, particularly part-time women doctors. She will know that my Department gives every possible encouragement to general practitioners to attend, on sessional bases, for minor injuries work in local hospitals, thus allowing the concentration of skilled resources and manpower to be placed in the major general hospitals.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS (MINISTER'S STATEMENT)

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Prime Minister if the public statement by the Secretary of State for the Home Department in the British Broadcasting Corporation programme, "Panorama", on 24th July on industrial relations represents Government policy.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath): Yes, Sir.

Mr. Dalyell: Can the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary help the House by naming perhaps two of the major British industrial companies whose management would think it wise to use the Industrial Relations Act?

The Prime Minister: The publicly expressed view of the CBI, which represents the great majority of British companies, is that the Act should remain.

CBI-TUC (DISCUSSIONS)

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Prime Minister what plans he has for meetings with representatives of the Trades Union Congress during the Parliamentary summer recess.

Mr. Adley: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement following his recent meetings with Trades Union Congress leaders.

Mr. Ashton: asked the Prime Minister whether he will make a statement on his recent official talks with the Trades Union Congress at Downing Street.

Mr. Meacher: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his latest meeting with the Trades Union Congress and the Confederation of British Industry concerning matters of mutual concern.

Mr. Clinton Davis: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his recent meetings with the Trades Union Congress.

Mr. Whitehead: asked the Prime Minister what consultations he had with Mr. Victor Feather and officers of the Trades Union Congress since 24th July,

1972; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: asked the Prime Minister whether he will make a statement about his most recent meeting with the Trades Union Congress.

The Prime Minister: I took the chair at a further meeting with the TUC and CBI yesterday. A work programme to be undertaken by the staff of the three parties was agreed, covering the practicability of action under two headings. The first is action by the participants in collective bargaining to improve the relative position of the lower paid, consistently with slowing down the rate of inflation. The second is action which could be taken by the parties to reduce the rate of increase in prices in the next twelve months. The work will also cover a number of factors which are relevant to these two objectives.
I am circulating the full text of the work programme in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
The arrangements for this work will be under the supervision of the Director-General of the National Economic Development Office and reports will be prepared for the next meeting of the three parties which will be held on 14th September.

Mr. Hamilton: Is the Prime Minister aware that most of the House will be very glad that these talks are to take place? How much of the information or the papers prepared will be made public to the House and to people outside? Will the Prime Minister define more closely what is meant by "lower-paid workers"? Is it those on £20 a week, £25 a week, or what figure? How does the Prime Minister square the need for slowing down price increases with the provisions of the Housing Finance Act which, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has said, will probably increase rents on average by 14 per cent. per year?

The Prime Minister: On the last part of the question, I do not accept the Leader of the Opposition's figures. He appears to have omitted the private sector of housing and the rent allowances in that sector.
The question of the lower paid is one of the matters which will be dealt with by the staff during the next four weeks


so that the three parties can have before them a proposal on the definition of the lower paid to discuss at the meeting on 14th September.
The question of the publication of the reports has not yet been discussed by the three parties. I hope that as much information as possible will be made available, because I think that it will be valuable to the country as a whole, quite apart from its value to those taking part part in the discussions.

Mr. Adley: In spite of the attempts by certain hon. Members opposite to sabotage all discussions between the trade unions and the Government, is it not encouraging that the Trades Union Congress has risen above this and that the Industrial Relations Act has brought it into direct discussion with the Government and the Confederation of British Industry?

The Prime Minister: In fairness, it should be said that a considerable number of right hon. and hon. Members opposite want to see work of this kind done and believe that it is in itself valuable. I hope that the whole House will feel that in the three meetings that we have had we have made substantial progress. There is now a great deal of work to be done by those representing the three parties and then conclusions and decisions will be required in September.

Mr. Meacher: Since shareholders profited from last year's rise in the price of ordinary shares to the tune of over £20 billion while wage earners gained only one-ninth as much in total wage rises, how can the Prime Minister seriously expect the ordinary industrial worker to forgo his just wage rise until the Government impose restraint on this colossal windfall stock exchange profiteering?

The Prime Minister: The question of investment and the means of providing the finance for it is one of those which all three parties have agreed shall be on the agenda and the work will be done during the coming weeks.

Miss Joan Hall: Has the Prime Minister had an invitation from the TUC to speak at its conference, which will take place during the recess?

The Prime Minister: I have already made public my availability, but there is still no proposal to take advantage of it.

Mr. Clinton Davis: In order to make talks with the TUC meaningful, will the Prime Minister indicate what proposals he is to make to it about the Government's action to curb property speculation, which has been quite indecent in the last year or so? Will he also indicate to the TUC what proposals he has concerning the Housing Finance Act, since council tenants' increases in rent will not be 72 per cent., which was the figure he presented in his bogus statistics, but more like 13 per cent.?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. The TUC find these talks meaningful or they would not have continued them or agreed to the programme of work and the meeting on 14th September.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I recognise the success of these talks, but would they not go even better if we could have an authoritative statement from the Leader of the Opposition repudiating the pernicious nonsense being peddled about by the Chairman of the Labour Party?

The Prime Minister: The Leader of the Opposition might prefer the Chairman of the Labour Party to speak for himself.

Mr. Whitehead: All of us want to see communications between the Government and the trade union movement, but may I draw the Prime Minister's attention to the recent article in the Sunday Press by Mr. Frank Chapple, who is by no means a militant in the trade union movement, saying that he and others like him have had their positions made impossible by the Industrial Relations Act and what has flowed from it? Can the Prime Minister not say to the TUC that there is some kind of timetable for the amendment or the withdrawal of the Act?

The Prime Minister: I am sure the hon. Member does not wish to exaggerate what Mr. Chapple said. He put forward specific proposals for amendments to the Act where he thought they would be justified. I have said that I cannot repeal or suspend the Act but that when it has had an opportunity to work,


amendments to it can be considered. We have indicated directly to the TUC in these talks that if it would like to put forward proposals for amendment we would consider them.

Sir Gilbert Longden: Does my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister see some real prospect that the higher paid and the rather higher paid will agree to a narrowing of the differential?

The Prime Minister: It is too early to reach a conclusion about that, but obviously in dealing with the lower-paid and wage negotiations at a level which will not put an undue burden on the firms or industries concerned, the relationship between the lower-paid and the rest must be taken into account. This is one of the most difficult questions we have been discussing, but it has been discussed very seriously and further work will need to be done on it.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: Has the Prime Minister seen the excellent contribution on this subject in the article in The Times yesterday by my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme)? Does he appreciate that it represents far more accurately the feelings of people in this country than some of the sentiments expressed by Conservative back-benchers? What does he intend to do during the recess to come ashore and find out what people are thinking?

The Prime Minister: Of course I respect the hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) but I cannot agree with the last part of the hon. Member's supplementary.

Mr. Edward Taylor: Will the Prime Minister take the opportunity of discussing with the CBI the disturbing lack of control by certain trade unions over their members stemming partly from the activities of some employers who decline to meet wage claims made by responsible trade union leaders and then concede them two or three weeks later to militants?

The Prime Minister: That specific question has not been discussed in the talks, but both the CBI and the TUC have been genuine in discussing difficult factors involved in wage negotiations and the means of dealing with them, particularly

in the context of the lower paid and the possibility of threshold agreements.

Mr. Harold Wilson: In answering my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton), the Prime Minister seemed to suggest that my letter to him was nullified by the exclusion of private tenants. Does he not recall that when the question was first put to him about the CBI limit of 5 per cent., I asked him for an assurance that council house and new town tenants would not find their rents raised by more than 5 per cent.? Does he recall that he refused to give that answer? He said that the figures could not be calculated—and then he calculated them and sent them to me. Does he now accept that the question was about council house tenants? Does he disagree with the estimate in my letter of 13 per cent. [HON. MEMBERS: "Too long."]—It is too high, not too long. Does he disagree with my estimate that the increase would be of the order of 13 to 14 per cent. for council house tenants, which was how this exchange began?

The Prime Minister: What I am saying is that the right hon. Gentleman cannot separate one part of housing provision from the whole of housing provision in this context. If he is trying to do so he is concerned not with the housing problem but purely with a political manoeuvre. What matters surely is that the private sector will also get help and, indeed, many of his hon. Friends have pressed for that help to be extended to furnished accommodation. The Government have undertaken to look at that to see whether it can be done. The right hon. Gentleman must deal with the whole picture.

Mr. Wilson: I asked the Prime Minister almost a month ago for an assurance that council house tenants' rents would not be increased by more than the CBI 5 per cent. He refused to give that assurance. Will he now do so? It is not for him to say what should be the parameters of the question he was asked to answer. The Prime Minister may dodge the question, as he dodges every other question. Will he now say whether he disagrees with the figure of 13 to 14 per cent.? If he wants to import into the question a matter which was not put to him concerning private tenants, is he not aware—[HON. MEMBERS: "Question."]—I can understand the sensitivity of Conservative


Members. Will the Prime Minister now agree that by importing the private tenants into the picture—and there are five categories covered by the Act, only the first of which comes within the 12 months period. [Interruption.] Will he say whether his policies are within the 5 per cent. of the CBI, because he has been dodging the question for a month?

The Prime Minister: The Leader of the Opposition's memory is failing him. I told him the first time he asked the question that I would give no such assurance, but I have given him a figure for the whole of the housing sector. He is on a bad wicket and the quicker he gets off it the better.

Following is the information:

Work Programme

At their first three meetings the Government, TUC and CBI have identified a number of problems which require further work. This will be undertaken by their staffs as a matter of urgency during the next few weeks. The results will be reported to the next meeting of the three parties.

1. An assessment of the practicability of action by the participants in collective bargaining to improve the relative position of the lower paid consistently with slowing down the rate of inflation. This will include:

(a) a consideration of the definition of the lower paid
(b) ways and means of implementing a programme for the improvement of their relative status
(c) a consideration of the relevance of threshold agreements in pay negotiations
(d) an assessment of the expected relationship between the future movement of pay and conditions (compatible with such a programme) and the movement of unit costs during the relevant period
(e) the implications for employment in the sectors mainly affected by the programme
(f) the requirements for the implementation of the Equal Pay legislation
(g) the implication of such developments for social security and similar arrangements including pensions.

2. An assessment of the practicability of action which could be taken by the parties to reduce the rate of increase in prices during the next 12 months, having regard to:

(a) the viability of any industries affected
(b) the need for increased investment and the means of providing for it
(c) the possible consequences for employment
(d) the desirability of reducing speculation in land and building

(e) the consequences for government expenditure/taxation
(f) the consequences for the general balance of the economy.

The Director General of the National Economic Development Office has been asked to supervise the arrangements for setting these studies in train and the preparation of the reports for the next meeting of the three parties which will be held on 14 September.

WARLEY, WORCESTERSHIRE

Mr. Peter Archer: asked the Prime Minister if he will make an official visit to Warley, Worcestershire.

The Prime Minister: I have at present no plans to do so.

Mr. Archer: Will the Prime Minister accept from me that until two years ago this was a classic example of an industrial area suffering from noise and pollution, but with most people busy and relatively prosperous? Within the last two years it has retained the pollution but lost the prosperity, and the prosperity recedes further with each new closure by the British Steel Corporation. Will the Prime Minister therefore give a clear answer? Do the Government accept responsibility for the social consequences of such events as the threatened closure of the Birchley Steel Mills, or does he say it is none of his business?

The Prime Minister: The hon. and learned Member knows that this is a matter which is the responsibility of the British Steel Corporation, and it was deliberately made so by the Labour Government. I know that he has an Adjournment debate about it tomorrow, and I know that he will then be able to initiate a fuller discussion about it. No Government under the existing legislation has the power to force British Steel Corporation to sell a mill if it is not prepared to do so. That provision was also written into the Act by the Labour Government. We have made it clear that the corporation is enabled to sell the mill if it wishes to do so, but in this case, for which I know he has deep concern, I cannot force the corporation to do something against its will.

Mr. Stokes: Will my right hon. Friend take it that if he were to visit Oldbury, which is the best part of Warley—

Mr. Faulds: Balls! Absolute nonsense!

Mr. Stokes: —and which happens to be in my constituency, he would receive a warm welcome and a clear realisation that the sturdy, independent people of Oldbury do not wish for any specious help from across the border?

The Prime Minister: I admire my hon. Friend's local patriotism. I hope that it will be possible one day to accept his invitation.

Mr. Faulds: Has the Prime Minister any conception of the damage which his Government's changes in industrial training have done to the prospects of young people, in an area such as Warley—which covers this foreign ground mentioned by the hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Stokes)—where about 50 per cent. of all school leavers enter engineering, compared with a national average of about 13·9 per cent., simply because many of the smaller firms cannot afford training facilities?

The Prime Minister: I recognise the hon. Gentleman's concern, and that of many other right hon. and hon. Members about training for the young, but I cannot for a moment accept that the steps which we have taken to increase the numbers being trained and which are borne out by the great increase in the figures of those undergoing training over the past two years, have damaged their prospects. I should agree with the hon. Gentleman if he said that much more still needs to be done, and we are trying to bring this about, but I do not accept that the increased training which we are providing has in any way damaged the potentialities of the young in his constituency.

Mr. Stonehouse: Is the Prime Minister aware that the closures by the British Steel Corporation in Warley are having a depressing effect not only in Warley but in the whole of the West Midlands? When he does arrange his visit to Warley, will the right hon. Gentleman arrange to cross the border to Walsall to see for himself the distressing effects which will be felt in that town as a result of the complete closure at the end of this year of the stainless steel tube works of Tube Investments, resulting in total redundancies of over 2,000?

The Prime Minister: The British Steel Corporation is carrying through a process

of rationalisation, which was one of the arguments put forward by the Labour Government when they nationalised it, and this has certain consequences. The answer lies in regional policy to bring about increased employment in other spheres, and I am sure that the House will agree, as most observers agree, that the present regional incentives and the areas which they cover are the most generous which this country has ever had.

Mr. Michael Foot: Although the Prime Minister tries to shuffle off his Government's responsibilities in these matters on to the British Steel Corporation, will he take into account that the Government have, apparently, proposed a figure of 28 million tons a year for production in the steel industry as sufficient, whereas the Corporation has been arguing for a figure nearer 36 million tons, and under the Labour Government it was proposing a figure of 42 million tons? Is it not plain, therefore, that under his Government's policy there has been a progressive reduction in the British Steel Corporation's programme?

The Prime Minister: Not for the first time, the hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. The bracket is 28–36 million tons, and it was reached by a joint body on which the British Steel Corporation was fully represented. The Corporation accepts the bracket. What the Corporation has done, like the steel industry in most other Western countries, has been to look at future demand and to make its assessment on that.

Mr. Foot: If the right hon. Gentleman says that I am wrong on the figures, does he then say that the Corporation has accepted the figure of 28 million?

The Prime Minister: I said that the hon. Gentleman was wrong in saying that it was Government policy which brought this about. What the British Steel Corporation has accepted is the bracket of 28–36 million tons for production. This can be reviewed annually, like all investment programmes, with the Corporation, and if it comes to the conclusion, with my right hon. Friend, that the demand will be greater than estimated by the joint body at this moment, action can be taken on it.

NUCLEAR REACTOR POLICY

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade (Mr. John Davies): With permission, I shall make a statement on nuclear reactor policy.
Decisions in the field of nuclear reactor policy have immense importance for the future strength of British industry and for the security and cost of energy supply. The Government are resolved to build upon the major achievements of the Atomic Energy Authority in the past and to ensure the development of a powerful capability for the future in which the AEA will continue to play a vital part. We have decided, therefore, to intensify the installation of nuclear plants as far as technological progress, environmental constraints, industrial capability and generating plant requirements permit.
As far as reactor systems are concerned the Government intend:
To push ahead as rapidly as possible with the development of the sodium-cooled fast reactor, which they see as the main element, in the long-term, of our nuclear generating programme. A small experimental reactor of this type has been running at Dounreay since 1960, and a 250 MegaWatt prototype is expected to run next year.
In addition, to arrange for a major programme of work to be carried out over the next five years, at an estimated cost of £15 million, largely directed towards component development. It is expected that this system might be ready for a first full-scale order to be placed in the latter part of the 1970s and for it to be assuming the major part of the nuclear plant orders from the mid-1980s.
Then to commission a complete and specific design and component development programme for the steam generating heavy water reactor. A 100MW prototype of this reactor has been operating satisfactorily for four years at Winfrith in Dorset, and it is accordingly a strong contender for adoption in the United Kingdom grid system. This work is likely to take some 18 months.
To complete urgently work on the advanced gas-cooled reactor with a

view to optimising the benefit to be achieved from the five generating plants of this type currently under construction; in addition, to study whether design improvements can be made with a view to maintaining it as a possibility for future construction.
Two other systems are currently under consideration, the high temperature reactor and the light water reactor. The HTR's prospects are in the medium term, and we shall explore the possibilities of an international collaborative development. for the LWR, our objective is to achieve assurance about the questions that have arisen as to its safety.
Within about 18 months all this work should have reached the stage where firm orders can be placed. In appraising the generating boards' capital investment programmes at that time, the Government will seek to secure the healthy development of the nuclear industry.
As to the structure of the industry, a much stronger design and construction capacity than is presently available will be necessary to provide nuclear plants on the scale on which the generating boards will need them in the 1980s.
It is reasonable also to envisage that the combination of the extensive research and development effort intended and the level of home orders should lead to valuable export business if we have available a strong design and construction capability. To this end the Government propose to encourage the consolidation of the present industry into a single strong unit. It should be closely involved with the AEA in reactor R and D and with the AEA and British Nuclear Fuels Limited in fuel development and fabrication. It should also have powerful technical and commercial backing. Finally, it should be capable of playing its part in international, and especially European, collaboration in the development and exploitation of nuclear reactors, to which the Government attach much importance. I am commencing discussions forthwith with all interested parties with a view to constituting as soon as possible the strong unit which I envisage.
In addition, I propose to set up a nuclear power board which will bring together all those having a major part to play in providing me with concerted advice on all aspects of nuclear generation policy and on the Government's


rôle in ensuring the most effective progress in this field. The board will have a major part to play in the decisions to be made in 18 months' time about the ordering of generating plants.
The plans announced in this statement do not require legislation. I intend to proceed as quickly as possible with any necessary consultations with the interests covered in this country and abroad.

Mr. Varley: The right hon. Gentleman's statement does not take the House much further on the development of nuclear reactor policy, and we had expected that we should by now have had a White Paper setting out all the issues. Even at this late stage, will the Secretary of State consider making available to the House much more information than we have had so far? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we think that it is right in some respects—and he may think that it is right in some respects—to proceed cautiously in view of the huge financial commitments that have already been made to nuclear reactor systems in the past, although they have not always lived up to their expectations? But certainly we expected today a much more definitive statement on the policy.
Can the right hon. Gentleman say more about the collaborative ventures he announced in his statement on the HTR system? Why has he rejected, or seemed to reject, the discussions his Department has had with Mr. Lorne Grey and the Canadians? Why not go ahead with a collaborative venture on that system?
Can the right hon. Gentleman also say more about the one-company structure the Government have decided to back? Is it, in fact, a one-company structure? Is it the Government's intention that the two consortia should merge into one consortium? Will there be Government backing, and on what terms? What return do the Government expect for any taxpayers' stake? Will the Industry Bill be used to bring this about?
Does the Secretary of State agree that in a probably worldwide situation of fast-approaching energy crisis, despite the oil discovery of this week, nuclear reactor policy must be taken as part of a total energy strategy and Britain must use all its indigenous resources? Can he tell us when the Government will be ready

to announce to the House the results of this survey on all these energy questions?

Mr. Davies: I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman that the statement does not take us much further. I think that it takes us a very important step further, particularly on the question of the emphasis which has been given to the work on the fast breeder and to the major design study into the steam generating heavy water system. These are two major moves, as is also the move in relation to the consolidation of the industrial side of the whole industry into a single unit. Therefore, I cannot accept the hon. Gentleman's broad proposition that it is a small step forward. On the contrary, it is a very specific and important step.
The hon. Gentleman asked about collaboration on the high temperature reactor. In both Germany and the United States there is great interest in this system as a medium-term system for generation. The United Kingdom shares the views of both those countries about the potential importance of the system. However, it is some way forward yet; it is not within the same span as systems like the steam generating heavy water reactor to which I have referred. Therefore, it is ideally one in which international collaboration could and should take place.

Mr. Dalyell: What about Canada?

Mr. Davies: I shall come to all the questions of the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friend.
As to Mr. Lorne Grey in Canada, the developments that have taken place in Canada have moved along the heavy water side to a considerable degree. It may well be that in the course of the major design study into the steam generating heavy water reactor we shall find ourselves having a great interest in discussions and perhaps collaboration with Canada. I do not exclude that as a possibility.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about the single-company structure. I cannot today go further than I have already gone. There will need to be very deep consultation among a great number of parties, but he would be wrong to assume that all that is envisaged is necessarily simply a merger of the two existing design and construction companies.
As to the degree to which what I have said today fits into a total energy strategy, it is right to say that the total requirements of energy in the country must be looked at in a strategic way embracing them all. This is a matter about which the Government are constantly concerned, but it would be wrong to imagine that there is a point in time at which the requirements can be arrested and definitely stated for an extended period into the future. The energy pattern is changing constantly, and the Government's decisions must take account of those changes. That being so, I cannot promise the hon. Gentleman a White Paper which arrests a situation which by its nature cannot be easily arrested in that way.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: As a member of the Select Committee on Science and Technology who yesterday was at Winfrith, where the steam generating heavy water reactor and the high temperature reactor are both situated, may I first say that my right hon. Friend's statement is a major advance? But does he fully appreciate the enormous importance of exports from the point of view of the future of the steam generating heavy water reactor and their dependence upon the decision of the Central Electricity Generating Board to order a reactor of that type? Will he bear in mind in particular that unless the CEGB makes up its mind to place an order the manufacturers and the Atomic Energy Authority will inevitably be at a disadvantage in promoting exports?
Secondly, what is to be the relationship between the new nuclear power board and the Electricity Council?

Mr. Davies: I fully agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of exports. Like him, I realise that the SGHW system has particular potential in that respect. I assure my hon. Friend that the decisions I have announced today in no way prejudice or fail to sustain that potential. It would not be practicable at this stage, without the further work to which I have referred, for the generating boards to contemplate an order for the system. Therefore, the work which I am commissioning is the most important next step for this reactor system that can be undertaken.
My hon. Friend asked about the relationship between the nuclear power board and the Electricity Council. It is my intention that there should be representatives of the Electricity Council on the board.

Mr. Palmer: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, and as his hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) said, the Select Committee on Science and Technology has these matters under investigation. Is it not true that, in view of the little that the right hon. Gentleman has said, that investigation is now more necessary than ever?
Secondly, does not the right hon. Gentleman's proposal for one nuclear boiler company fairly vindicate the recommendation of the Select Committee in 1967, when it made that very proposal, which was mistakenly turned down then?
Thirdly, does the right hon. Gentleman's statement mean that there is now no danger of this country's making the gigantic blunder of turning to American reactor systems?

Mr. Davies: I am the first to recognise the very valuable contribution that the Select Committee has made in this and other matters, including an early recommendation in the form the hon. Gentleman mentioned. I am thankful to him for that.
The likelihood of there being an order of a light water reactor of American design must clearly be suspended on the concerns about safety which are so much to the fore at present, not just in this country but throughout the world. Until they are resolved one way or the other, it would be difficult to contemplate orders for a system of that kind.

Mr. Hugh Fraser: While I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the structure he proposes, may I raise a most pressing point—the question of orders for the heavy electrical machinery industry? Unless orders are given and there is an improvement now, there will be no heavy electrical machine industry left in this country when all the rationalisations have been carried out. That is by far the most important matter in my view, though I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the structure he proposes for the nuclear reactor programme.

Mr. Davies: Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser), I am concerned about the position of the heavy electrical plant industry. The Government have already taken some important steps by advancing orders for the Ince plant, and it is possible that further orders will be forthcoming for plant. This matter governs my thoughts a great deal.

Mr. Dalyell: In spite of Ince, what about Stakeness? We were hoping that some definitive judgment would be made on it. Has the right hon. Gentleman nothing to say about it? Can he elaborate rather more on the problems which face the sub-contractors? As the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) said, they are facing serious problems—for example, Reyrolle Parsons.

Mr. Davies: Stakeness is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, but I have it in mind that he will be having something to say on the matter in the not too distant future. [HON. MEMBERS: "When?"] No doubt he will choose his own moment. I cannot say more about the question of plant orders. As I have said, these matters are very much of concern to the Government. I know that Reyrolle Parsons in particular was greatly appreciative of the action of the Government with regard to Ince.

Mr. Skeet: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the House greatly appreciates the fact that he is keeping his options open but at the same time giving emphasis to an all-British system—the steam generating heavy water system? Will he, in his international collaboration, bear in mind the work done by Siemens of West Germany, and Gulf General Atomics, of the United States. In consideration of the heavy water systems will he bear in mind that the Scottish Electricity Board wants to buy that system?

Mr. Davies: I note these points and register them. I hope that this British steam generating heavy water system will prove in the next phase of design study to be as successful and trouble-free as it has been in its work up to date.

Mr. Eadie: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that if there were any possible

interpretation that his announcement means that we are to contract out of the nuclear power industry and buy nuclear power off the shelf from the United States it would be disastrous, because fuels are close at hand and we must address ourselves to the problem of nuclear power? Will he be more forthcoming to the House on one matter which may be interpreted optimistically from his statement? Will he tell us what the position now is for the North of Scotland Hydro-electricity Board in relation to the power station that it wishes to construct? Since we already have an oil-fired power station in prospect in Scotland, what are the opportunities for experimentation in nuclear power?

Mr. Davies: It would require a considerable degree of imagination to read into what I have said that there is an early intention of ordering an American-based system.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland would not be disagreeable to my saying that the problem in relation to installing a steam generating heavy water reactor at Stakeness is largely one of timing. The requirement for additional plant capacity is likely to accrue before the time when in any circumstances whatever Stakeness plant would not have been available for such a form of reactor.

Sir D. Renton: Will the new nuclear power board be responsible for further experiments in de salination?

Mr. Davies: I would be grateful if my right hon. and learned Friend would put down a Question about that. I am not prepared for it at the moment.

Mr. Maclennan: The only part of the right hon. Gentleman's statement to be welcome to the House today is that which relates to the fast breeder reactor, and it would be erroneous for him to claim any credit for that announcement, since it has been part of the consistent policy of successive Governments. There is nothing new in it at all. He has ducked the decisions which have to be taken on the rest of the reactor systems.
In relation to the steam generating heavy water reactor, is it not the case that the right hon. Gentleman, by his dilatory dithering, and by submitting questions to successive committees, such


as those of Lord Rothschild and Lord Vinter, has deprived this country for 18 months of the opportunity of a steam generating heavy water reactor at Stakeness, a prototype which would have sold this extremely valuable system abroad? How can he now have the effrontery to try to shuffle this matter off on to the Secretary of State for Scotland to make some announcement behind our backs in the Summer Recess?

Mr. Davies: When the hon. Gentleman reads in HANSARD what he has said I think he will realise that it was an accumulation of nonsense and misunderstanding.

Mr. J. H. Osborn: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that whereas we have alternative energy sources in the short term, the world has a rising demand for nuclear energy as a source of electricity. The steam generating heavy water reactor has good export potential. We have poured an immense amount of money into atomic energy research and development. Will my right hon. Friend encourage the Central Electricity Generating Board to place an order for a steam generating heavy water reactor to see how it works in practice?

Mr. Davies: I realise the potential of the system for export. One of the useful features of the work of the nuclear power board will be to bring together all concerned with the future with a view to seeing that orders for generating plant and the like conspire towards the best advantage of the industry.

Mr. Ross: What are the implications of the statement for Dounreay? Where is the major development in component work to be carried out in respect of the fast breeder reactor?
I remind the right hon. Gentleman that all this started with a proposal by the North of Scotland Hydro-electricity Board for a nuclear power station at Stakeness. He is now saying that he has taken so long over his consideration that we no longer can have a nuclear station there as the generation has to be in time for the proposals of the board when it is needed. It is implicit in the right hon. Gentleman's statement that there is not to be a nuclear power station at Stakeness but one near Aberdeen.

Mr. Davies: I will leave the announcement to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, whose responsibility it is. On the last point, the right hon. Gentleman falls into precisely the same error as the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). He is quite wrong, as is not entirely unaccustomed.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the components programme for the fast breeder reactor. He asked whether the component programme in association with the fast breeder reactor development was going to Dounreay. The whole of the work of Dounreay will be directed towards component activity. Component activity is largely in the hands of the industrial concerns which will be responsible for the industrial components supply.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING

The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Maurice Macmillan): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a statement.
I have now completed the process of consultation on the proposals published for discussion on "Training for the Future".
As the House will recall, there were three main elements:
First, the development of a Training Opportunities Scheme to give a wider choice of training to meet the needs of individuals.
Second, the establishment of a National Training Agency which would take over many responsibilities at present carried out by my Department and which would co-ordinate the continuing work of the industrial training boards.
Third, it was proposed that the levy-grant schemes of the industrial training boards should in general cease after the end of 1973 and that the National Training Agency should finance out of public funds continuing incentives to key training activities.
The Training Opportunities Scheme has been widely welcomed. The first substantial development in the scheme starts this month. I mean to keep the pressure on expansion in order to exceed, if possible, the target figures set out in "Training for the Future."
The proposal for a National Training Agency has received substantial support. But many people, including the TUC and the CBI have expressed concern at the separation of such an agency from the new Employment Services Agency operating within my Department.
Before coming to any final conclusion on the ultimate form of organisation, I propose to have further talks with the TUC and CBI. The purpose will be twofold: to co-ordinate the employment and training services, and to involve employers and employees in both these activities. To get things moving before any permanent organisation can be established, I am reorganising the training services within my Department under a Chief Executive to match the management structure of the Employment Services Agency.
This "Training Services Agency"—and, naturally, the permanent organisation into which it will in due course be integrated—will carry out the broad range of functions set out for the proposed National Training Agency in "Training for the Future". These include the operation of the Training Opportunities Scheme; financing grants to encourage key training activities; meeting the administrative expenses of the industrial training boards, though the staff of the industrial training boards will continue to be employed by the boards; and providing training services in areas not covered by industrial training boards.
The cost of these activities, in addition to the cost of the Training Opportunities Scheme, would—as envisaged in "Training for the Future"—be in the range of £25 million to £40 million a year.
Finally, I come to the proposals for the future operation of the industrial training boards. Many responsible people have expressed to me their conviction that these would lead to a substantial falling-off in the quantity and, more particularly, the quality of training in important industries and that some continuing financial pressure for good training is necessary if the ground gained in the last decade is not to be lost. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the present system of levy-grant is not satisfactory.
I therefore propose the following changes. As regards industrial training

board levies, smaller firms—for which the levy-grant system has never really been suitable—will be wholly exempt, and the present exemption levels will be raised. I shall also require boards to exempt from the levy after 1973–74 any firm which they are satisfied is carrying out such training as is reasonable to meet the firm's own needs.
Other firms above the exemption limit may be required to pay a levy which will not, however, exceed 1 per cent. of pay-roll, and the money will be used by boards to encourage better training in their industries. Adequate appeal machinery will be instituted. This will mean that over the next two years a great number of firms will become free of the levy complications. I believe that these arrangements will also help to ensure the maintenance of adequate and good quality training by industry.
These, in outline, are the plans for reorganising the manpower services which are essential to the reduction of unemployment, to better job opportunities for individuals and to the proper use of manpower resources. They will take time to put into full effect. But we are starting the rapid expansion of training and training opportunities at once.

Mr. Prentice: May I at least welcome the fact that the Government have moved a little along the road that we advocated from this side of the House in the debate on 5th June in that they have decided not to abandon the levy-grant system altogether in 1973? Is this not one more example of policies that were formulated in the "lame duck" period being abandoned? We want to know from the right hon. Gentleman why he has moved only such a small way along the road.
There are two points in particular which emerge from the statement. First, why does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that all smaller firms in all industries should be exempt irrespective of the training needs of each industry? Does he realise that this is liable to deal a death blow to many of the group training schemes operating among smaller firms which have been such a great help to workers recently? What does he mean by "smaller firms"? Will he give us some definition, because it is a matter of some urgency that we should know what is meant.
Why does the right hon. Gentleman make this arbitrary upper limit of 1 per cent. for industrial training levies? At a time when many of the training boards are finding it necessary to propose higher levels would it not be much more sensible if each board could assess the training needs of its own industry, propose its own levy and its own level of exemption, particularly since the right hon. Gentleman still has the power to approve or disapprove the recommendations which the boards make?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that these are matters that we shall certainly want to debate in Government time soon after the House returns? Will he make this point to the Leader of the House, and will he also tell the House whether he now envisages that there will be a need for legislation at an early date or whether he thinks the proposals can be carried through without that?
The House is interested in what the right hon. Gentleman has said about talking to the TUC and the CBI about co-ordinating employment services with training. Is he aware that he seems to be moving very slowly in the direction of the Labour Party over this? Will he look at what we said in our Green Paper about the need for a national manpower board because, he seems to be getting to the same point although much more slowly than we did? We have always welcomed the Training Opportunities Scheme and we welcome what he said about its being implemented quickly. Does he recognise that this scheme will be no use unless it is part of a policy for restoring full employment and that plans for extending Government training centres with the current appalling level of unemployment will inevitably be met with cynicism and no one will take him seriously until this forms part of a strategy for restoring full employment?

Mr. Macmillan: I think that we could have done without the somewhat cheap jeer at what my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House published some time ago as a consultative document. When we consulted on it we were accused of giving in to pressure, but this consultation was genuine, as I constantly pointed out to the House. The result of it is outlined

in the statement I have made. It will require legislation in due course.
As to the small firms, my Department will discuss the level of exemptions with each board following the course recommended by the Bolton Committee. The levy level of 1 per cent. was arrived at because some boards are already operating a system like this with great success, notably petroleum and wool. A large number of others are moving in this direction. Most boards already have a levy rate of 1 per cent. or less.
I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that my right hon. and hon. Friends when in Opposition were considering plans for a manpower services commission and all that I have said so far is that we are establishing a departmental agency and consulting all those concerned on the possibilities of co-ordinating this with the employment service, which I accept is required to have a satisfactory organisation for dealing with the problem of training, re-training and helping towards a solution of the unemployment problem.

Mr. John Page: Is my right hon. Friend aware that a large section of industry has felt that the system was quite unsatisfactory as it is now and will welcome his new proposals? Is he also aware that his very sensible treatment of levy-grant with a large number of exemptions for firms where proper training is being carried out is workable and will be welcomed and means that the whole system will be much better used than in the past?

Mr. Macmillan: My hon. Friend is right. These plans were the result of very wide consultation with both sides of industry and with all those concerned with training. That they are workable is self-evident since, broadly speaking, this is a system which has already been worked with some success.

Mr. Denis Howell: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us a little more about the viability of the industrial training boards after his proposals are effected? He says that all small firms are to be exempted and that many other firms are to be exempted on the ground that they train their own personnel, even though the number of apprenticeships has dropped dramatically. If we add those two things together, who is left to pay


the money to keep industrial training going?

Mr. Macmillan: I endeavoured to make it clear in my statement that the administrative costs of the industrial training board will be borne centrally and not out of the levy. The levy will be wholly available to encourage training in industry. I remind the House that the system of selective grants which was envisaged in the original consultative document is maintained, and this forms part of the £25 million to £40 million extra a year which we are putting into training.

Mr. Costain: Does my right hon. Friend appreciate that his statement will be widely welcomed by the small firms which found that the Labour Party's policy was theoretical and impractical? Does he agree that a great deal of money was wasted on training schemes which trained people for wrong jobs? Will he take account of the unfilled vacancies for which job training is most needed and arrange that training is directed to this end?

Mr. Macmillan: I think that the smaller firms will welcome these proposals, which follow a recommendation of the Bolton Committee. On my hon. Friend's second point, the whole purpose of trying to co-ordinate the Employment Services Agency and the Training Services Agency is to make sure that training is given for jobs for which there are vacancies and try to develop skills which are required rather than for skills which are not required.

Mr. Harold Walker: Is the Secretary of State aware that those who are genuinely and sincerely concerned for the future of industrial training will be deeply dismayed by his confirmation today of the Government's doctrinaire flight from the principles of the 1964 Act? Is it not true that the Engineering Industry Training Board—the key board—among many others, warned him that the termination of the grant-levy system would bring about a serious reduction in industrial training and seriously undermine the programme on which it had embarked?
Is it not also true that the substantial scaling down of the levy-grant system

will inevitably lead to a fall in spending on industrial training? What indications has the right hon. Gentleman had that trade union officials and educationists will he prepared to participate in future as they have in the past in the diluted scheme he is now putting forward and will not feel that they are wasting their valuable time?

Mr. Macmillan: The scheme as outlined follows very closely the recommendations of many of those whom we consulted. It would have been impossible to follow the inclinations of all those we consulted because there were such widely differing opinions, even among training experts. As for the engineering industry, the point made clearly Ito me was that it was the absence of a levy rather than the levy-grant system which might lead to a falling off in training.
This scheme is designed to obtain what was widely recognised to be necessary; namely, some form of sanction against firms which will not, or cannot, train for their own needs. The question of training beyond industry's own needs will be covered, as it was originally proposed to be covered, by the special grant system. I do not see that this will lead to any fall in spending since it has always been accepted that training by industry for industry's own needs should be a charge on industry rather than on the Government. As I have said, there is the sanction of the levy for those industries which do not carry out that responsibility. I therefore hope that all those concerned with making a success of the training which is so important for the future of industry and of the country will find this a system which they will be able to operate successfully.

Mr. Pardoe: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, contrary to the Government's apparent belief, there is even now in industry a need for more training, not less, and that his reference in his statement to ground gained in the last decade was unnecessarily complacent? Does he realise that not enough training momentum exists in industry for it to continue at a sufficient level without plenty of stick and carrot? Will the right hon. Gentleman define more precisely what his stick and carrot amounts to? What will the new levy amount to in total? Will it be part of the £25 million to


£40 million a year, or will it be over and above that?

Mr. Macmillan: It is not possible for me at this stage to quantify what the levy is likely to be, since it will be raised wholly from the firms which are not carrying out, by definition, their training responsibilities within industry. It will be spent wholly on improving training within industry.
The hon. Gentleman makes a great mistake when he says that we are spending less on training. We are spending some £120 million a year more on the Training Opportunities Scheme and intend to spend from £25 million to £40 million over and above what is raised in levy on special grants and training generally.

Mr. Normanton: As a member of the Central Training Council, may I extend a conditional welcome to my right hon. Friend's statement? It is conditional in the sense that it reflects substantially my right hon. Friend's undertaking and that of his predecessor that the document which was presented would be consultative. Many representations made to my right hon. Friend have been duly noted.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the standards of training at all levels in industry, technical and managerial alike, still leave much to be desired? Therefore, will he give clear directions and impose duties upon all the agencies—those to which he has referred today and those which have operated in the past—and to the industrial training boards which continue in being that they must undertake to raise the standard of training, and increase and not diminish in any circumstances the quality of their service?

Mr. Macmillan: I think that the whole House will agree that the need is to raise the standard of training and to improve not only the training within industry but also, as we are doing in the Training Opportunities Scheme, training designed to give greater opportunities to individuals. My hon. Friend will agree that there are two elements in considering this matter—the efficiency of industry, and the opportunity for individuals. I should not like the second to get lost in our consideration of the first. Any training enthusiast would give only a conditional

welcome to any scheme put forward by any Government since the divergence of view among training enthusiasts is such that any scheme is almost bound to be open to criticism from some training enthusiast.

Mr. John Mendelson: How does the Secretary of State reconcile his announcement of the consultations that he has held with the conclusions that he has drawn? Is he aware that the Engineering Industry Training Board in Yorkshire and nationwide is a firm believer in the present system? Does he realise that those people most directly concerned with the work are very fearful about the abolition of the present scheme? Has he visited one of the training centres of the Engineering Industry Training Board in Sheffield where as many as 250 apprentices were trained for whom no place could be found in private firms?
In the face of this evidence, how has the right hon. Gentleman come to his conclusions? As the House is adjourning for the recess tomorrow, had he not better wait before preparing legislation and listen to the House and to the people most directly involved before making up his mind?

Mr. Macmillan: We have had a very long period of intense consultation. I realise the importance of the point which the hon. Gentleman has made about training apprentices. That is covered by the extra money which we are bringing forward to enable apprentice training schemes to be continued.—[An HON. MEMBER: "They are being destroyed."] There is no question of them being destroyed.
As to the opinions that we considered, there were those which training boards put forward as agreed views, those which their members, both employers and employees, put forward separately and those put forward separately by the educationists. The main point of them, and the key to the criticisms, such as they were, of the plan set out in "Training for the Future" was that a financial sanction was required. Our consultations indicated that the entire apparatus of the levy-grant, system was not required, but that some financial sanction was required, and that is precisely what the system I have described provides.

Mr. Speaker: I understand the House's interest in this matter, but I cannot allow many more questions.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: I join in the general welcome which has been given to my right hon. Friend's statement. As one who has been engaged for six years in dealing with 10 industrial training boards, I believe that the principles which he has put forward for change are good. My right hon. Friend referred to the exemption of companies which are good trainers. How does he propose to make certain that an independent judgment is made upon their work and that it is not left to the whim of an industrial training board? Will he have a look at the 1 per cent. cut-off for the levy and perhaps consider that it may be fractionally too high?

Mr. Macmillan: There is nothing to stop training boards reducing their levies below 1 per cent., as some are already doing. I have merely set an upper limit. On my hon. Friend's other point, I referred in my statement to the need for an adequate appeals machinery. The precise form it will take will depend upon the final form of the major organisation, which we shall decide after discussion with the TUC and the CBI. I entirely agree with him that there must be some form of appeal to a judgment independent of the training board concerned.

Mr. Orme: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that his statement gives us the worst of all worlds? As one who has had an engineering apprenticeship, I know the unevenness within that industry. The right hon. Gentleman is pandering to the worst employers, and the best employers will be exploited as they were previously. Is he aware that the module system built up in the engineering industry, which is second to none in Europe, could by his actions be destroyed? Is the Minister further aware that the Engineering Industry Training Board, which has proved to be possibly the most efficient and the best training board, both on the trade union side and on the employers' side, will be greatly disenchanted by the Minister's statement, which sets back industrial training for a generation?

Mr. Macmillan: I understand the hon. Gentleman's apprehension. I agree with him that there is great unevenness in

the engineering industry, but I am perfectly confident that the system I have proposed provides a sufficient sanction to prevent firms which are either unable or unwilling to train adequately for their own needs from escaping the levy. They will either train adequately or they will pay the levy. There is no threat to the module system to which the hon. Gentleman referred. When he comes to examine the proposals in more detail, he will see that we have taken great account of the views expressed by the Engineering Industry Training Board, among others, and I have every belief that it will find this system satisfactory.

Mr. Redmond: Is my right hon. Friend aware that those of us who have taken a great deal of interest in this matter since "Training for the Future" was published will want to examine his statement with care? At the same time, we realise that many small firms will breathe a sigh of relief on hearing that they are to be relieved of the bureaucracy underlying all the form-filling, and so on. Will my right hon. Friend accept my congratulations that he has not fallen for the high-powered, expensive public relations campaigns which have been mounted since "Training for the Future" was adopted by the training industry—as it has become?

Mr. Macmillan: I remind my hon. Friend that small firms which are covered by a training board will be able to get advice and help from the training board, and that exempted small firms will be eligible for selective grants borne by the Exchequer and not by the training boards if they qualify for them. We intend to maintain the help for small firms, and the proposals seek to remove the element of bureaucracy and administrative complication.

Mr. J. T. Price: Although industrial retraining has always received strong support in the House, is the Minister aware that it is a peripheral activity in relation to the mass unemployment that we are suffering. Does he not agree that, however refined and sophisticated are the methods applied to industrial retraining, it is no cure for the faulty economic system that puts people out of work? Industrial retraining, with all its advantages to those who are without a job, does not compensate for the failure


of the central Government to produce economic policies which will keep people in work. Just by fiddling about with industrial retraining we cannot deal with mass unemployment of about 900,000.

Mr. Macmillan: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not regard our plans, or any Government's plans, for training and retraining as simply a method of evading the problem of unemployment. These are two different matters. Despite the high level of unemployment, there are, and are likely to be, bottlenecks in the shortage of skilled labour with the right skill. These bottlenecks contribute to unemployment, and that is where industrial retraining comes in. The provision of the right skill at the right time is an important factor in dealing with unemployment. These bottlenecks have held up many plans for development.

Mr. McBride: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I share the views of my fellow craftsman my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme)? The new financial arrangements will steeply reduce industrial training opportunities and will give rise to intense criticism. What will happen to the waiting lists, especially in Wales? Is this to be training for employment? I hope that it will not be training for unemployment, which is the only thing that the Government have succeeded in increasing.

Mr. Macmillan: The hon. Gentleman need not be concerned about the loss of industrial training opportunities. We are spending £120 million on this. There is a waiting list. The Training Opportunities Scheme started to come into operation only this month. One of its major functions is to reduce the waiting list and increase the numbers of people being trained by the Government to between 60,000 and 70,000 by 1975 and to 100,000 as soon as possible. As I have said, I shall try to keep the target set by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, whatever may be said by Opposition hon. Members, the reorganisation of the training scheme was inevitable in any case? It may be some 

years before we get it exactly right. Is he aware that the most pressing need at the moment arises from the fact that in a time of high unemployment many young men in the country cannot get training opportunities? These opportunities are delayed for a year or more, and by the time jobs become available the situation gets beyond the stage when firms will take on other apprentices. Will my right hon. Friend give first priority to this short-term problem?

Mr. Macmillan: Yes, indeed. As I said in my statement, it will take some time before these long-term plans can operate fully. Meanwhile there is a pressing need for training. This is why we are expanding the scheme to provide training opportunities and why I am setting up immediately in my Department a Training Services Agency under a Chief Executive in a managerial-type structure of the type which has been so successful in reforming the employment services.

Mr. Leadbitter: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that his statement is not generally welcomed in this House and, indeed, that it will be highly unpopular in the country? Is he further aware that what he has said will cause uncertainty in general training since it breaks down the general principle which was created some years ago? Since he has said that the boards will be viable because of the grant system, will he say what estimates have been made about the future type of training, the levels of training and the numbers to be trained? Could he state categorically to the House that the levels, numbers and types will not be lower than the existing figures since there is a need for growth in these activities?

Mr. Macmillan: I fully accept what the hon. Gentleman said. There is an urgent need to expand training, and that is what we intend to do.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Speaker: Yesterday the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Wallace) raised a point concerning possible inconsistency by the Table Office in its treatment of Questions relating to consumer protection.
I have looked into the matter, and find that the hon. Member's Question was disallowed in the first instance not because it related to consumer protection as such, but because it asked for action which would have involved legislation. In the Answer of 18th July, which the hon. Member was shown, and to which he referred yesterday, the Minister said that he was satisfied with the legislative protection which existed. Although this effectively barred further Questions asking for new legislation, a re-draft which avoided this difficulty was put to the hon. Member and accepted by him.
Question No. 30 on yesterday's Order Paper by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward Taylor), however, related purely to the distribution of ministerial responsibilities within the Department of Trade and Industry. This did not involve any legislation, and, therefore, was not barred by the Answer of 18th July.

COMPLAINT OF PRIVILEGE

Mr. Douglas: Mr. Speaker, I wish to seek your guidance on a matter on which I have given notice and to seek your ruling regarding the contents of a letter sent to me by Mr. N. J. M. Bennett, Managing Director of Wiggins Teape, as to whether certain words used in this letter constitute a breach of privilege.
On 22nd July, 1972, I issued a statement to the Press asserting that during the period of ownership of Samuel Jones & Co. (Devenvale) Ltd by Wiggins Teape the parent company had transferred funds in excess of £1 million from Tillicoultry. This comment appeared in a number of newspapers.
On Tuesday, 1st August, 1972, after a meeting with officials of the Department of Trade and Industry and others in Glasgow, Mr. Bennett and a Major McCallum of Wiggins Teape sought to question me about my statement of 22nd July. In the light of subsequent events I now see this questioning as an attempt to induce me to elaborate on my Press statement in a manner which might prove actionable.
I told the company's representatives that I stood by my view and urged on them the publication of a report by the University of Stirling's Industrial Projects Division into the company's affairs at

Tillicoultry, which I feel will more than substantiate my opinions.
Yesterday I received a letter from Mr. Bennett together with a number of enclosures, specifically a letter from the firm's solicitors dated 3rd August to newspaper editors stating inter alia:
A suggestion was made that Wiggins Teape had transferred funds in excess of £1 million from Tillicoultry. This is not only inaccurate but we have advised our clients that it is defamatory
and suggesting that a short prepared statement should be published. This statement refuted the transfer of funds and claimed—
The facts are otherwise. It is true that dividends totalling £1,127,000 were declared by the Tillicoultry subsidiary in favour of its parent company between 1966 and 1971, but the dividends were never paid, there being no cash available for this purpose.
The prepared statement further claimed that Wiggins Teape actually increased its investment at Tillicoultry over the period of ownership.
It would not be in order to pursue the accuracy of this claim, but I am confident that a detailed investigation will show that what the company did was to produce a diminution of fixed assets and an expansion of current assets, mainly stock to suit the exigencies of the Wiggins Teape empire as a whole and not for the benefit of the complex at Tillicoultry. Funds were transferred in the form of dividends—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman appears to be going into the merits of the matter. I would remind him that he is seeking to raise a matter of privilege.

Mr. Douglas: I respect your ruling, Mr. Speaker, but I am trying to give the background information on the question of privilege. I have only a few more sentences and I shall conclude. Funds were transferred in the form of dividends arising from profits made at Tillicoultry and the claim that sums were loaned back only substantiates the transfer.
These are matters of public record, and what I am raising with you, Mr. Speaker, is the statement contained in the letter of 4th August, 1972, to the effect:
Provided the three newspapers act as we have requested and further reference is not made to this matter publicly, I hope that no further action will be necessary on our part.


I seek your view, Mr. Speaker, whether this statement constitutes a breach of privilege in attempting to restrict the freedom of speech of a Member in pursuit of his parliamentary duties.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman has raised a matter of privilege, and, in accordance with current practice, I shall rule on it tomorrow.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I wish to raise a point of order with you, Mr. Speaker, on the second Motion on the Order Paper relating to the Summer Adjournment. I do not know whether you wish me to raise it now.

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will raise the point when that Motion is dealt with.

MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS

Mr. Crouch: May I raise a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I seek your guidance on a particular matter, and since this is the second week of August at a time when we are usually not sitting in this House you may well find me out of order.
I feel that there has been some discourtesy to back benchers following a statement made last week in the House by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to the effect that we would have a statement this week relating to a decision on Maplin Sands. I feel that today, with so many Members present, would be an ideal time to have that 

statement, but we have not been permitted to hear it. I wonder whether you regard it as a discourtesy that we have not had this statement today.

Mr. Speaker: This is not a matter of order for me. It is precisely the kind of matter which can be raised on one of the Motions tabled for discussion today and with which we shall be dealing in due course.

Mr. Ross: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker—

Mr. Speaker: I have said that it is not a point of order, but is a matter which can be raised in the debate.

Mr. Ross: Perhaps I may be allowed to say, further to any question of discourtesy, that I was told that I was talking nonsense when I suggested that a certain decision was to be announced. But as soon as I walked out of the Chamber I was told that the decision had been taken and that this was said in a letter:
The Board therefore announce that they have decided to proceed with the oil-gas station at Boddam, near Peterhead.
Surely it is only courteous for Ministers to make these decisions in the House so that they shall not waste hon. Members' time.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman knows that that is not a matter of order. Fortunately for the Chair the contents of Answers and Questions and matters of courtesy are not matters for the Chair.

SITTINGS OF THE HOUSE

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That this House do meet tomorrow at Eleven o'clock, that no Questions be taken after Twelve o'clock, and that at Five o'clock Mr. Speaker do adjourn the House without putting any Question.—[Mr. Hawkins.]

4.40 p.m.

Mr. Marcus Lipton: I wish to speak to this Motion. My reason for doing so is that, as you will learn from my remarks, Mr. Speaker, my point can best be made on and is more applicable to this Motion than to the second Motion.
I want to suggest to the Leader of the House that instead of Mr. Speaker adjourning the House at five o'clock tomorrow he should adjourn the House at six o'clock in order to provide the Attorney-General with an opportunity to explain to the House his unprecedented conduct in relation to the Poulson bankruptcy proceedings.
You will be aware, Mr. Speaker, that there were some technical difficulties which stood in the way of hon. Members putting Questions to the Attorney-General on this matter. In the end, those technical difficulties were resolved, and Questions to the Attorney-General on the matter were allowed. However, by a well-known device the Attorney-General dealt with the matter by means of a Written Reply to an Oral Question which had been put down for answer last Friday. That is an old trick which is adopted by Ministers from time to time to enable them to avoid making an oral explanation to the House on what might be an embarrassing subject to the Government.
I want the House to adjourn at six o'clock tomorrow so that the Attorney-General has an opportunity to explain what I have described as his unprecedented conduct in relation to the Poulson bankruptcy proceedings. The facts of the matter are these. At attempt was made to get the hearing adjourned for an indefinite period, and the Attorney-General supported an application for that purpose. He instructed counsel to appear for him. In addition, the Official Receiver, who is employed by the Department of Trade and Industry and is an important official of that Department, was also represented by counsel in support of that application.
The Registrar ruled that the public examination should continue. That was after learned counsel appearing for the creditors had said:
The public have the right to hear the debtor and every single creditor has power to question him.
Counsel on behalf of the creditors has a long experience of bankruptcy proceedings. He made it clear that in his 28 years' experience such an application was unique. In my view, too, so far as I have been able to ascertain, this conduct on the part of the Attorney-General and the Official Receiver is without precedent.
In his Written Reply to the parliamentary Question which appeared in HANSARD for last Friday the Attorney-General tried to make it clear that the reason why he sought to ensure the adjournment of the proceedings was that they might prejudice any possible prosecution resulting from the current police investigations. The right hon. and learned Gentleman went on:
I was not acting on behalf of the Government but in pursuance of my constitutional responsibility for the fair administration of the criminal law."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th August, 1972; Vol. 842, c. 128.]
It may be that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is technically correct. Being of a credulous disposition I might be inclined to believe him. But millions of people outside this House will not believe that to be true, especially in the light of the experiences that we have had in relation to the National Industrial Relations Court and the rapidity with which the executive can get a move on when they wish to.
There is a growing tendency on the part of the executive perhaps not to tamper with the judicial process but certainly to lean heavily upon it when it suits their purpose. That is a very dangerous precedent which we cannot allow to go unchallenged. That is why I want the Attorney-General to come here tomorrow to explain to the House why he has taken this course of action.
It may be, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman said, that he was not acting on behalf of the Government. It may be that he locked himself in a room and decided, without telling the Prime Minister or the Leader of the House in his capacity of Home Secretary in charge


of the Metropolitan Police, that he was about to take this course. That is possible but not very likely. However, when we come to the Official Receiver supporting the application, no doubt with the knowledge and approval of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, it cannot be argued, as the Attorney-General tried to argue on Friday, that the Government did not take any part in the application. That will be viewed by millions of people outside this House as complete humbug. For reasons into which I shall not go now, everyone knows that the Government are directly concerned to bring every possible pressure to bear in order to ensure that these bankruptcies proceedings are adjourned.
What makes it even more sinister is that according to a statement which appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 3rd August, a spokesman on behalf of the Attorney-General said:
… moves being considered were an appeal against the decision of the Registrar … to go ahead with the hearing, or a further application …
to be made in due course.
Appeals from decisions of bankruptcy registrars have to be made to the Divisional Court. The Divisional Court is not sitting at the moment because the long vacation has started. If an appeal has to be lodged against the Registrar's decision, it will involve a special sitting by the Vacation Judge and a Chancery judge.
In the light of our experience of the NIRC we know that nothing is beyond the power of the Government when they wish to get a move on or when they wish to hush up something. Before we adjourn tomorrow for the Summer Recess, we are entitled to know whether the Attorney-General or the Official Receiver acting on behalf of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will make an appeal to the Vacation Judge in order to secure the adjournment of the Poulson bankruptcy proceedings.
This is all part of a pattern which is beginning to manifest itself and which seems to indicate that the executive are seeking more and more to tamper with our judicial processes.

Sir Bernard Braine: I rise on a point of order. Mr.

Deputy Speaker. I am in some difficulty. I wish to raise a matter which is relevant to tomorrow's business. However, my impression was that it would be more appropriate to raise it on the next Motion. On the other hand, the hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) has been allowed to develop his argument on this Motion. I wish to know whether I should raise my point now, or whether it will be more appropriate to do so on the next Motion.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu): In general, the next Motion is the one on which hon. Members normally raise points of this kind.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I gave private notice to Mr. Speaker that I wanted to raise a point of order on this very important Motion, though I agree with the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine) that it is customary to raise these matters on the second Motion. While my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) may have jumped the gun, nevertheless he is quite in order. We can raise these matters on this Motion.
The point that I wish to raise concerns the timing of this Motion. When the Government put down what we have come to call Recess Motions, is not it the usual custom to give hon. Members at least a couple of days' notice? It is all right for the Patronage Secretary to shake his head. I know that it has occasionally happened. But my point is that these Motions were put down very late last night. The first that hon. Members saw of these Motions was when they received the Order Paper today.
The Patronage Secretary sits there muttering. It has been the custom to put down Amendments to these Motions covering the kind of point my hon Friend the Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) had in mind—namely, to delete the dates and to put in other dates to bring us back earlier or to have a later date of rising. We then have an opportunity of amending the Motion. We have no opportunity now of amending it.
Had the Government been decent enough to put the Motion down last Thursday or Friday, my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton, myself and the hon. Member for Essex, South-East


would have been able to put down suitable Amendments which would have given us the opportunity of discussing these matters without necessarily opposing the basic principle of the Motion.
Therefore, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am asking whether you will agree to permit us to put down manuscript Amendments to each of these Motions, because we have not had the opportunity which we have had in the past of putting down proper Amendments. I am not passing any comment on the Chair, but the Patronage Secretary and the Government have, as usual, tried to pull a fast one.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department, Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Robert Carr): Further to that point of order. Will the hon. Gentleman illumine us by quoting some dates when the opportunities about which he is talking have been given? I cannot recollect any.

Mr. Lewis: Last Christmas

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Perhaps I can assist the hon. Gentleman and the House by pointing out that it is not unusual to give this sort of short notice and it is certainly not out of order to do so. It is customary and desirable to have any debate there may be on the second item of business. Therefore, I suggest that that might be done now.

Mr. Robert Mellish: So that no mischief can be alleged or insinuated, I should point out that had my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) attended his own party meeting last Thursday he would have known that both these matters were to be debated today.

Mr. Lewis: Further to that point of order. That is quite out of order and unnecessary because what happened at a party meeting has nothing to do with the Chair.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is addressing the Chair on a point of order. Will he kindly stick to it?

Mr. Lewis: Is it in order for the Chair to be asked for its opinion about what happens at party meetings? We are entitled to put down Amendments to

these Motions, but we have not had the opportunity of doing so.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: But the hon. Gentleman has had opportunities to put in manuscript Amendments. I am not saying that they would have been selected by any manner of means, but the hon. Gentleman has had those opportunities.

4.52 p.m.

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: Further to the matter raised by the hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton)—and because it is in line with that matter and no other I raise it now—may I say that, although for totally and entirely different reasons, I certainly hope to hear from the Attorney-General tomorrow. I have in fact put down a Private Notice Question on this matter which may or may not be selected. I regard the delay and the adjournment of the Poulson bankruptcy proceedings until the end of September as absolutely deplorable. It is nothing short of a scandal that a man in public life, such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling), should have to wait until the end of September whilst various allegations are being flung about in all quarters. I am sure that the Attorney-General should exercise his utmost endeavour to see that the hearing is disposed of as expeditiously as possible.
No one will presume to cast a judgment on the decision of either the Official Receiver or counsel involved in the case about having reasonable time to prepare whatever they want to put forward. However, there is no reason that this matter should be treated as if it is in vacation and must wait until the end of September. The matter should proceed with all expedition. I believe that the Attorney-General should tell the House that he will exercise such powers as he has in that respect to the best of his ability.
I dissent from what the hon. Member for Brixton said about the Attorney-General's duties. My right hon. and learned Friend's constitutional duties are absolutely plain. He is responsible for the administration of the criminal law in its entirety. He is not responsible in any other sense. My right hon. and learned Friend was entitled to be properly represented by Mr. Slynn of counsel on that previous occasion, but he has no authority


over that court. Those of us who have knowledge of both the bankruptcy and the criminal courts and their proceedings know that everything the Government have done is perfectly proper.
To underline the matter, we must not forget that both the Lord Chancellor and the Law Officers have two separate functions. They have their political and legal functions and they must perform them separately to the best of their ability. It is not right for anyone to impugn what the Attorney-General has done. Although we are rising tomorrow, I think we should hear from my right hon. and learned Friend on this matter.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: As the matters I raise can be crisply and concisely put, I think they more properly belong to Motion No. 1 rather than to Motion No. 2, because I am not asking that there should be any alteration other than extra time given.
The first matter concerns the behaviour of senior Ministers regarding today's statement. It would be an abuse of the time of the House to go into the details of the pros and cons of the nuclear power programme. I do not intend to do that. However, it seems, to say the least, a bit egregious that we can be told the Secretary of State for Scotland is about to make a statement on Stakeness, but cannot do so this afternoon, when, in a letter which was handed to me by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) from the Minister of State, Scottish Office, to the noble Lord Hoy, the Government said:
The Board are therefore announcing that they have decided to proceed with an oil-gas fired station at Boddam, near Peterhead for which formal application is already before the Secretary of State and that they are retaining the Stakeness site, which is particularly suitable for a nuclear station, for later development.
It is a matter of Ministers' behaviour towards the House of Commons. Therefore, I put it not in a strident or in a carping way to the Patronage Secretary and the Government's business manager, the Leader of the House: should they not have a word with the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry why this announcement could not have been made? Without this knowledge the statement was far from coherent. I leave it at that. I ask this question about the

behaviour of senior Ministers during that statement.
I intend to raise three other matters even more crisply. First, is there likely to be any statement tomorrow on the situation that has arisen over Cunard? As is well known, Cunard has announced that it is to order another cruise liner and the chairman of Cunard has said that it will be built in a foreign yard. Many issues arise here, because Cunard has had a massive amount of Government money. I content myself by refering to the answer given on 2nd March to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) by the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who said:
Two agreements made with the Cunard in 1968 under the Industrial Expansion Act, 1968, provided for governmental loans of up to £24 million towards the cost of completing the Queen Elizabeth 2. £19½ million of this was actually taken up, of which £7½ million was lent to the Cunard Steamship Company at the rate of 4½ per cent., while £12 million was lent to the subsidiary Cunard Line Ltd. at a rate of 4½ per cent. until 1972".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 175.]
I need not go on, because it is well known precisely how many millions of taxpayers' money the Cunard company, rightly or wrongly, has had. After all this financial water has flowed under the bridge, is it right that if the company has money to order a new cruise liner we should be told in an announcement, apparently after little consultation with the trade unions or anybody else, that it is to be built in a foreign yard?
If it is the Government's intention to help the shipbuilding industry—and I declare an interest as representing a constituency which has sub-contractors to the shipbuilding industry—and to pour out massive funds to the shipbuilding areas of the country it sticks in our gullet, to put it mildly, that the chairman of the company, apparently without consultation, should say that the new liner is to be built in a foreign yard. Are we to have a statement on that?
As a member of the Committee considering the Finance Bill, it was my impression that the Committee under Mrs. Alison Munro, which was looking at the whole question of VAT on childrens' shoes, would report before the end of the parliamentary Session. That was the impression which I obtained from both


the Chief Secretary and the Financial Secretary. Has there been any decision on VAT on childrens' shoes?
Is there any decision about charities? I ask that because again the impression was given to the Finance Bill Committee upstairs that Treasury Ministers would finally make up their minds on the taxation of charities and let us know before Parliament went into Recess. May we have some kind of statement, preferably a little more enlightening than that given to the other place on 27th July on the whole issue of charities?
Those are four issues—charities, childrens' shoes, the shipping position and, above all, the behaviour of the Secretary of State towards the House on a crucial nuclear power issue.

Mr. John Biggs-Davison: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Being where we are now, would it be for the convenience of the House if we were to take the first and second Motions together?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu): It is not for me to say whether that would be for the convenience of the House. If the House says "Yes", I shall say "Yes". Apparently there is not unanimity about that.

5.2 p.m.

Sir Bernard Braine: As we have now for some time been discussing what ministerial statements should or should not be made tomorrow I am emboldened to raise a point that I have in mind, and in doing so I shall be brief.
For some time the House, the country, my constituents and those of my hon. Friends in Essex and Kent have been expecting a statement on the siting of the runways for the Third London Airport. There were rumours last week that such a statement would be made before the end of the week. So far it has been impossible for me to get any kind of information out of the Department of the Environment as to whether one will be made this week. Although I am the constituency Member concerned, when I attempted to get information this morning I could not be told whether a statement would be made tomorrow.
It may or may not have been the intention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary

of State for the Environment to make a statement but if he is being prevented from making one the responsibility for that rests squarely upon my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. If that is so, I beg him to have second thoughts.
I should like to remind my right hon. Friend and the House that the decision to site the Third London Airport offshore at Foulness in my constituency instead of at some inland site in Buckinghamshire or elsewhere was taken because the Government considered, quite rightly, that it would be wrong to inflict the noise nuisance upon people living inland and there were strong environmental advantages in siting the airport offshore.
Even so, large numbers of people will be affected in one way or another. If one takes the population in the narrow peninsula between the Thames and the Crouch and those living in North-East Kent, about 500,000 people will be affected. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has repeatedly promised that the environmental considerations would be borne in mind in carrying out this development. It must be clear to the House that depending upon where the runways are sited so access routes will flow and the noise nuisance will be determined. It has therefore been a matter of the greatest moment to my constituents, to those of my hon. Friends the Members for Southend, East (Sir S. McAdden), Canterbury (Mr. Crouch), Faversham (Mr. Moate), and others to know where the runways are to go.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East and I and all the local authorities in South-East Essex have left the Secretary of State in no doubt about where the site should be. I shall not go into detail about that now, since this is not the proper occasion, but to leave until the very last day of the Sitting an announcement on this subject is a serious matter because it gives us virtually no opportunity to cross-examine the Secretary of State should he announce a decision which is wholly unacceptable to us. But to make no statement at all would be quite monstrous and totally unacceptable to my constituents.

Mr. R. Carr: I wonder whether it would help if I were to tell my hon. Friend that I believe that my right hon. Friend hopes to make a statement on this subject tomorrow?

Sir Bernard Braine: With respect, our right hon. Friend has been hoping to make that statement for some time. There has been no doubt about his wish to make it. As the constituency Member concerned trying to find out whether a statement affecting the lives and amenities of his constituents would be made before the House rose, I can only say that my right hon. Friend's officials were not able to tell me anything before lunchtime today.
I regard this as extremely discourteous, and it is also short sighted, because the Secretary of State knows that there are very strong objections to siting these runways at any place other than Site D. My right hon. Friend will also know that some of us had grave misgivings when the consultative document was published because it prejudged the argument by saying that there were advantages in going for the cheapest site. That naturally had an upsetting effect upon my constituents and so to leave until the last moment an announcement as to when an announcement is to be made, let alone what its contents will be, is very unsatisfactory.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think the hon. Member is going very far from the timing of tomorrow's proceedings.

Sir Bernard Braine: I promised to be brief, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but for my right hon. Friend to say that the Secretary of State hopes to make a statement tomorrow is just not good enough, and I think that I carry my hon. Friends from constituencies affected with me in saying that. I hope, therefore, that before my right hon. Friend replies to the debate he will have taken the opportunity of sending messages outside and will be able to tell the House that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will make a statement tomorrow.
But even if my right hon. Friend makes that concession, I want to place on record that I consider it very unsatisfactory that a matter of this kind should be left to the very last day of the Sitting. Parliament and the nation willed that the Third London Airport should be inflicted upon my constituents. For environmental reasons they willed that the Third London Airport should be sited at Foulness. We did not want it there. We did not seek it. It is surely incumbent, therefore, upon the Government to take the feelings

and subsceptibilities of my constituents and those of the people of Southend and North-East Kent fully into account. I hope for nothing less than a promise from my right hon. Friend that the Secretary of State for the Environment will make a statement tomorrow.

5.10 p.m.

Mr. Gerald Kaufman: I take up first two matters which have been raised already. The first is the timing of the putting down of these Motions. I do not share the upset of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) on this subject because I am grateful that we are not debating the Motions on the very last day. I thank the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House for the fact that he has given us the opportunity for debates on these Motions, which are traditionally the Motions on which we raise our constituents' grievances without invading the time of hon. Members who have the Adjournment subjects.
It would be very helpful to hon. Members if more notice were given. We understand the Government's problems and the fact that they are not too sure of what business they will get and sometimes of the date on which they will he able to send the House away. On that basis, and taking those points into account, we are already grateful for the assistance the Leader of the House has given. We should be even more grateful perhaps in future, understanding these problems, if he could give greater notice.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: My hon. Friend, quite inadvertently, has made a statement which is not in accordance with the facts. He has said that he would not want the Motion to be put down tomorrow because it would interfere with the Adjournment subjects. It has never been and cannot be put down "tomorrow" because the Motion states
at its rising to-morrow do adjourn.
Therefore, it is always a day or two before that the Motion is put down.
That this House do meet to-morrow.
If the Motion were put down "tomorrow", the rising of the House would have to be the day after. The Motion is never put down on the day of rising.

Mr. Kaufman: I take my hon. Friend's point with regard to the first Motion.


With regard to the second Motion, I lost my Adjournment subject for the summer Adjournment last year because the debate was given over to Northern Ireland affairs. Because of that fact I was unable to raise the case of two of my constituents who were killed by a doctor. On the first Motion my hon. Friend may be right, but on the second Motion he is not.

Mr. R. Carr: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who will admit two things. First, in the past it has not by any means been common practice to give notice of these Motions, although I agree that it is convenient to the House when we can. The hon. Gentleman will know that on this occasion I was able to say in business questions last week when the debate would take place.

Mr. Kaufman: Yes. The right hon. Gentleman will know that on this, and, perhaps, on other things, I have personally no criticism of him.
The second point on which I comment is the very important matter raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton). This matter was commented upon by the hon. Member for Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies). I wish to say nothing which in any way would prejudice, damage or upset the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling), who is already undergoing things which no other hon. Member would wish to undergo. On the other hand, with regard to possible proposals for statements to be made and actions to be taken by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney-General, I very much regret to have to say that there has grown up over the past few weeks in this country a very great cynicism about what is alleged to be the manipulation of the law by the Government. I do not associate myself with the views that are held by some or with this cynicism. I merely wish to place on record the fact that this feeling has grown. Constituents have mentioned it to me, and we have seen it in journals. It is the feeling that over the question of the five dockers imprisoned in Pentonville, for example, there was collusion between the Law Lords, the President of the National Industrial Relations Court and the Official Solicitor.
I do not associate myself with those views, but they are being commonly and

widely held. I deplore anything which could be held in any way to undermine the public's respect for the processes of our law, which are absolutely paramount to the maintenance of a democratic society in Britain. Therefore, in any proposals which are made with regard to the bankruptcy proceedings taking place in Wakefield, I beg the Leader of the House not to say anything or to associate himself with anything which might lead people to believe that the Attorney-General, as a Member of the Government, is in any way intervening in proceedings which might be damaging to someone who was Home Secretary.
I am not in the least saying that that is what would be done. All I am saying is that the cynicism which is growing at present about allegations of manipulation of the law is such that anything that would add weight to that cynicism ought very seriously to be thought about. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will accept that I am not in the slightest way attempting to cast any reflection upon either his right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet or anything that the Attorney-General might do.
I come now to what I wish to raise as a matter—[Interruption.] It is all very well for the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. James Hill) to giggle. I trust that he will accept that what I have said is of some seriousness and that I have said it in no way contentiously or opprobriously. I have tried to help rather than harm. Instead of giggling about these matters in the Chamber, the hon. Gentleman would do far better by going to his constituency or to one of the many rooms in the House of Commons where he could entertain himself in manners he may consider preferable to listening to me.
The Motion will decide the time at which we rise tomorrow. I wish to ask that no time at which we rise tomorrow shall be decided until we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Employment and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry as to what they will do to alleviate the unemployment situation in Manchester, particularly in my constituency of Ardwick.
We have an appalling situation in the Manchester travel-to-work area. In the


past two years, since the present Government came to power, the number of redundancies announced totals 23,000. The number of jobs created is 3,180. Therefore, in these two years the rate of redundancies in Manchester, in proportion to the number of new jobs created, is seven men out of work for every job created to deal with those men.
I advised the Departments that I would raise this matter today. Yesterday the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, in reply to a supplementary question from me, quoted a statement of the Chairman of the North-West Industrial Development Association—which appeared to give encouragement to those who believed it—that matters were improving in the Manchester travel-to-work area. But that statement was made in June, which is now two months ago. Since that statement was made matters have very much deteriorated in Manchester. For example, the number of unemployed in the Manchester travel-to-work area has risen by more than 1,500 to the appalling total for mid-July of 30,116. Unemployment has risen from 4·1 per cent. in June to 4·4 per cent. in July. Most remarkably, the number of vacancies has fallen during this period.
Therefore, we have a situation which the right hon. Gentleman as a former Secretary of State for Employment will, I am sure, regard as terrifying, that in the Manchester travel-to-work area 20 unemployed men are chasing every vacant job.
Since that statement, which was made by the Chairman of the North-West Industrial Development Association, and which the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry commented upon in such an airy way, the rate of redundancies, which had been slackening in the Manchester travel-to-work area, has speeded up again. The latest figures given to me in the House show that redundancies are now running at three for every new job created.
Yesterday the Under-Secretary quoted a June statement by the Chairman of the North-West Industrial Development Association. On 13th July Mr. Jack Eccles, the Secretary of the North-West Trades Union Congress Advisory Committee, said:

We are deeply disturbed at the situation in the North-West …".
Therefore, a month after the NWIDA said that at that stage it was satisfied the North-West TUC Advisory Committee was talking about being "deeply disturbed".
Unemployment among school leavers is worse than it has been in Manchester at any point for 30 years. I have mentioned the thousands of redundancies which we are expecting because of the closure which has been announced already of Churchill Machine Tools and the Irlam BSC establishment. Also, the Miles-Redfern establishment at Hyde is to be closed within the next 18 months.
Churchill's is to lay off nearly 1,000 men within the next six months. I quote in this connection, and very relevantly, what the manager of the Altrincham Employment Exchange has said about the Churchill closure:
There are 300 fitters about to lose their jobs at Churchill's and in the Manchester area 500 unemployed fitters are already chasing 10 vacancies.
Therefore, already we have 50 men out of work chasing every job in their trade. When these closures occur—they are to take place within the next six months and at a time which is traditionally a period of deterioration in any case—there will be 80 unemployed men chasing every vacancy in their trade—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is making an important statement, but he must relate it to the Motion.

Mr. Kaufman: I thought I was doing so, Mr. Deputy Speaker. What I was saying, and what I shall say again in a moment in my final remarks, which I was coming to, was that I wanted certain things to be said from the Government Front Bench before we agree to the House rising at any particular time tomorrow. That is why I have stated these facts.
I believe that it is also necessary to place on record the further statement by the manager of the Altrincham Employment Exchange that
Churchill's 120 apprentices were likely to face special difficulties
as a result of the closure.
Earlier today the Prime Minister spoke about the unprecedented measures which the Government had brought in to deal


with these particular regional unemployment problems. As one who has pressed for many of these specific measures, I regret to say that in the Manchester area these measures are not biting, as the information I have given to the House amply demonstrates.
Therefore, new measures are urgently needed, because we shall not be back until the middle of October when the whole winter employment decline will be in full spate. Manchester has special problems. We need special measures to tackle them. We need these measures before the House rises tomorrow. Before we agree to the House rising at any partiular time I hope that the Home Secretary and Leader of the House, who has special knowledge of these matters, will be able to make a statement about what the Government will announce tomorrow to help deal with these grave problems

5.25 p.m.

Dame Joan Vickers: I wish to ask my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House whether anybody is coming to the House tomorrow from the Ministry of Defence to make a statement about the Royal Dockyards. As my right hon. Friend knows, there is considerable trouble about the wages of loyal servants of the Government in the Royal Dockyards.
I am sure that the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) will agree with me when I say that for the first time in 300 years there has been a walkout from the yards. Yet there can be no more loyal body of workpeople than the workers in the dockyards. Many of the men served for 20 years in the Royal Navy before they started work in the dockyards.
These workers now want to know what their position will be in the wage negotiations. These are industrial civil servants who have not got the same opportunity as people working for private firms to put their case forward. The fact that over 200 of them came to the House from Devonport Dockyard alone to put their case forward and that each one of them paid his own fare shows how pressing they regard the matter.
The matter is very pressing indeed, because there is an advertising campaign on now by South Africa to attract some of the technicians from these yards. South

Africa wants leading technicians to go to South Africa to service and repair South African submarines. These men are being guaranteed a minimum of £35 a week, free passage, a pension scheme, holiday and service bonuses, free medical care and VIP treatment. Types being recruited are engine-room fitters, turners, pipe fitters, electricians, sonar technicians, weapons mechanical and electrical technicians and refrigeration experts. Such men are already being invited to go for interviews and to apply.
What has disturbed me in particular is that our local newspaper has reported that a Ministry of Defence Royal Navy spokesman has said:
These technicians will be a serious loss to our yard force.
I agree with him about that.
They have served expensive apprenticeships, but, unfortunately, there is nothing that we can do to stop them emigrating to South Africa and using their skills there.
I hope that tomorrow a spokesman will come from the Ministry of Defence to tell us that something can be done—in other words, a wage settlement, giving these people something similar to what they are being offered by South Africa. It is a sad fact that some of these men, especially those with children, would be better off if they were not working but were drawing social security. Let the Government treat these loyal workers as VIPs in the same way as South Africa would treat them.

5.28 p.m.

Mr. Norman Atkinson: I hope that a spokesman from the Ministry of Defence will, in response to the eloquent plea of the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers), some to the House before five o'clock tomorrow to give some explanation why the Government are refusing to pay a decent living wage to people whom the hon. Lady and others represent.
These people are not confined to the Royal Dockyards. There are many other industrial civil servants involved in the pay claim which has now been partially rejected by the Government. The Government have offered a small amount to be going on with. According to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Jellicoe, who is in charge of the negotiations on behalf of the Government, should


not go beyond the present Government offer of £1·50 a week across the board.
To put the matter into perspective before the Minister attends tomorrow, let me state a little of the background and illustrate the urgency of the claim. It is, as the hon. Lady has said, a claim by industrial civil servants, of whom there are 192,000–47,000 of them in the Royal Dockyards, 18,000 in the Ordnance factories, and the rest spread throughout the Government service in the Stationery Office and elsewhere. I understand that no fewer than 53,000 of these people are in the bottom two bands of the wage structure. They are earning either £17·30, or 65 pence above that, and that means that 53,000 industrial civil servants are earning less than £17·95 a week. Yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer is advising Lord Jellicoe to resist further pressure on behalf of these men for an increase above the £1·50 that has already been offered.
We expect a Minister to come to the House with some explanation of this attitude because of the sympathy expressed this afternoon by the Prime Minister towards the claim. He said he wanted to improve the lot of the lower paid. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been making belligerent speeches lately, but he, too, has expressed sympathy with low-paid workers. We learned this afternoon that the Prime Minister has gone to Portsmouth, the Isle of Wight or somewhere else to study the question of low-paid workers and try to define what a low-paid worker is. By any definition and by any stretch of the Prime Minister's imagination the answer to that question must be that anything below £20 a week is low. We know that that is a plimsoll line, a poverty line, below which these workers find themselves. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor, while expressing sympathy with the low-paid workers, are none the less resisting their claim for a decent living wage which, even with the increase offered by the Government, will still be less than £20.
Is there not a degree of duplicity here by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor? What is behind their attitude and their refusal to accept the wage claim? Why are they so adamant that these men are overpaid, and why are they

not prepared to discuss further the issue of differentials? Craft workers and their representatives in the dockyards and ordnance factories are not pressing for maintenance of their differentials in the way that they are so often accused of going by the Chancellor and the Prime Minister. The craftsmen are as much concerned about the low-paid workers as they are about their own wages, and they, too, are grossly underpaid. Many of us have had correspondence from the workers at Aldermaston who have been expressing concern about their wages. Technicians there and craftsmen are earning no more than £26·30 a week gross.

Mr. Stanley Orme: That is below the national average.

Mr. Atkinson: As my hon. Friend says, that is below the national average. Those workers, too, are experiencing resistance to their claim for a decent wage like our good friends in the dockyards and the ordnance factories.
The House therefore has every right to expect a Minister to explain why the Government are speaking with two voices. When the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have the chance to do something for the lower paid, and for their own employees, the industrial civil servants, in particular, they refuse. Why is that? Why can we not offer more than £1·50? Why are they so afraid of the Press discussing the claim? Why have they put what is tantamount to a D Notice on the—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member is making a powerful case with exactly the same sort of arguments as he will probably make if he succeeds in persuading a Minister to come to the House tomorrow. Today he must relate his argument to the timing of tomorrow's proceedings.

Mr. Atkinson: I was about to go on and explain why the nuclear base at Rothesay might come to a halt because of the strike there, and why trade unionists are considering bringing the Farnborough air show, which is to be held in the first week in September, to a halt. In view of these grave possibilities a Minister should come to the House to explain the Government's duplicity. He must explain why they express sympathy and yet behind closed doors instruct their


hireling, Jellicoe, to refuse to offer more than £1·50 to union negotiators.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: These are excellent statements of a powerful nature but they are not allowed in this debate, which is concerned with tomorrow's proceedings and the timing of them.

Mr. Atkinson: I am seeking to explain why the Chancellor and the Prime Minister or some other Minister should come to the House tomorrow, as a result of the request made by the hon. Member for Devonport, in extended hours beyond six o'clock tomorrow afternoon. There is a risk that we shall not have a Farnborough air show this year. The lads will not be there, and if they are not there the show cannot go on.
If the Polaris base in Scotland comes to a halt as a result of the strike, that must be a matter of deep concern and urgency. If Aldermaston stops work, who knows what will happen to our defence programme. Therefore, before five o'clock or six o'clock tomorrow afternoon a Minister should explain the Government's position in some detail.
I am speaking on behalf of my colleagues in the AUEW and my colleagues in the House who are representing the negotiating trade unions. We speak with a common voice on this issue in trying to urge the Government to face reality and stop hiding behind closed doors. The Government must come out into the open and explain why they are misleading the country. Let us see the colour of the Government's money. Let them come into the open and offer more than £20 a week to these workers. If they mean what they say, let them show an example of their intentions to the TUC-affiliated unions by proving that they will do something about the low-paid workers.
By such an action the Prime Minister will be able slowly to win back what little credibility he had some time ago. If he starts today, perhaps his image will improve and perhaps we shall see an honest Prime Minister who means what he says when he expresses sympathy for the lower paid. He is not the only guilty man in the Government because there is a whole series of them.
I do not want to prolong this debate for too long by going through the history of those Ministers, and so I shall confine

my remarks to the issue concerning the low-paid industrial civil servants. These people, who have an urgent case, depend on the House of Commons to do something on their behalf. Apart from withdrawing their labour from certain rather sensitive spots such as Farnborough, the polaris base or Aldermaston, they have little else in the way of bargaining power. There is need for us here to do something for them, since, in a curious way, we are the employers of civil servants.
I do not see why industrial civil servants should be treated differently from white-collared civil servants. Why are there two standards in the Government's mind? Why is the Prime Minister resisting this claim? Is it that he knows that these people have real bargaining power only when there is a war on? I hope that that is not the reason, and I hope that we shall have an explanation tomorrow and a statement that these people are entitled to a decent wage and a good standard of living. We owe them a living, we owe them a decent wage, and we expect a Minister to be sufficiently generous to tell us tomorrow that there has been a dreadful mistake, that the £1·50 is a misapprehension, that it should not be regarded as the correct figure, and that it was not intended in the first place. I hope that we shall be told tomorrow that a decent offer is being made, thus avoiding the trouble which we can foresee.

5.41 p.m.

Mr. James Hill: I apologise for having laughed during the speech of the hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman). I meant no disrespect to the Chair. It was just that I felt that laughter was the only permissible reaction to the crocodile tears running down the hon. Gentleman's face—he is the master of the smear campaign—when he talked about the Poulson affair. We should leave these affairs to the Attorney-General, in his wisdom, to work out on his own.
I consider that an extra hour could well be provided tomorrow because the Department of Trade and Industry is not looking sufficiently clearly to the future of ship repairing and shipbuilding in my area. I know that my colleague from Southampton, the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. R. C. Mitchell), is well aware of the problem in


Southampton, too. On Monday I asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he would make a statement on the general rundown in the shipbuilding industry in the Southampton area and what aid would be given to ensure further repair work. The reply was:
Whilst I have no plans to provide aid for the industry in the Southampton area or for the ship repair industry as a whole, I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave today to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney).
Thinking that there might be something of substance in that reply, I waited patiently for today's HANSARD, only to find that it gave no ground for believing that we in Southampton would receive any aid. This is what my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry said:
The ship repair industry, in common with other industries, receives taxation allowances on capital expenditure and regional employment premium"—
we do not—
It shares with the shipbuilding industry Customs concessions on imported materials. Under the Industry Bill it will be eligible for regional development grant and selective assistance.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) was quite pleased with that reply, but the hon. Member for Itchen was not so pleased. He said:
Will the hon. Gentleman take special note of the ship repairing industries in areas outside development areas, like Southampton, which are experiencing considerable difficulty …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th August, 1972; Vol. 842, c. 1224–5.]
We have two ship-repairing companies in Southampton, Harland and Wolff and Vosper Thornycroft. Harland and Wolff's ship repairing is being rapidly run down in Southampton. The unemployment problem in Belfast is probably making the company put all its energies and contracts towards Belfast. But we in the Southampton area feel that the Minister should look at the matter in the light of the evidence. I have a letter here, for example, from Mr. J. A. Wilde, the repair manager of Vosper Thornycroft, and he puts the matter in cogent terms:
As ship repairers we have to rely on ships which use Southampton to obtain work, since

it is almost impossible to convince owners that they should come to Southampton just for repairs.
Today's news about Cunard makes the matter more worrying. I had grave fears about the future of Cunard, and I mentioned them in the House, when I heard that a certain property company was about to take over this well known and well established shipping company. I knew that there were large amounts of capital on loan from the Government, and I was convinced at that time that there would be no rundown in its use of our shipping facilities in Southampton, but we hear today that two of its new cruise liners will be ordered from Danish shipyards. This will mean no ship repairing in Southampton because, due to the new orientation of the passenger service, the ships will no longer be coming back to Southampton, except, perhaps, for their yearly lay-ups.
We face a severe problem. Ship repairing is running down. We have no means of coaxing ship owners to come to Southampton just for repairs. Therefore, I feel that a Minister could profitably spend the extra time tomorrow explaining how he will help the area. It is not in a development area, but it is none the less suffering a severe unemployment problem on the ship repairing side.

5.46 p.m.

Mr. Robert Maclennan: I take it that on the present Motion it is not appropriate to call for debates tomorrow on some of the major issues confronting the country, which many of us will wish to raise on the next Motion on the Order Paper, but I think it imperative to raise now the question of statements which should be made tomorrow.
I refer again to the matter raised by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) arising from the statement by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry this afternoon about the future of the nuclear reactor programme. In a number of respects, that statement was both obscure and, conceivably, damaging to the future of the industry.
Apparently, for reasons to do with the bashfulness of the Secretary of State for Scotland perhaps, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was unwilling to


make any announcement to the House today about the future of the steam generating heavy water reactor and the wish of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board to build such a reactor at Stakeness in Banffshire. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry told us that the Secretary of State for Scotland would, in his own time, make an announcement. Apparently, what happened was this. The Minister of State, Lord Polwarth, wrote a letter to my noble Friend Lord Hoy, which was released this afternoon at the time of the Secretary of State's statement to the House of Commons, announcing that, because of the urgency of the power needs of the North and North-East of Scotland, the Hydro-Board was forced to go ahead with the construction of an oilfired power station.
This is a deplorable way to treat the House. It is outrageous that the senior Minister responsible for power and the nuclear programme should be unwilling to submit himself to questioning on one of the central issues in the whole decision structure, while at the same time a junior member of the Government issued statements to the Press and to Members of the other place. In these circumstances the House has a right to a further statement from the right hon. Gentleman or the Secretary of State for Scotland tomorrow, to enable us to examine in detail the reasoning behind the decisions. There are those among us who believe that it is a very bad decision—bad for Banffshire, bad for power supply in Scotland, but, above all, bad for the future of the nuclear power industry and its potential export of the steam generating heavy water reactor. We cannot have this sort of issue shrugged off by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, as he shrugged off the questioning of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) as being nonsense. It is a very important question, and the right hon. Gentleman deliberately evaded answering it, although he must have had knowledge of the facts, as did other members of the Cabinet then on the Government Front Bench, including the Secretary of State for Scotland.
Therefore, because of what amounts to plain duplicity by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the least that he can do to clear up the terrible mess is to make a further statement to the House.

5.51 p.m.

Mr. David Crouch: There was a leading article in The Times yesterday headed:
Tunnelling In A Cool Climate.
I cannot complain that we are not to have a statement on the Channel Tunnel tomorrow, because it has not been promised, but I hope that there will be no decision about the Channel Tunnel while the House is in recess. I regard it as very important for the House to have the opportunity to debate the matter as soon as the Government make a decision. It would be a very cold climate for the Government if they allowed such a decision to be made and announced while the House was away on holiday.
I rise to discuss the matter before the House because of that other major planning decision, the decision concerning Foulness, or Maplin Sands. I said "Foulness" deliberately, because when I referred to the matter in a point of order earlier this afternoon some hon. Members did not understand what I meant when I spoke about "Maplin". To me, as the Member representing the constituency only 12 miles across the water from Maplin, Maplin is the third London Airport. Because my constituency has a coastline, I could be 15 miles from the proposed new third London Airport if the decision is to place the runways at the furthest point out to sea, a possibility which the Department of the Environment has been considering.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has placed before all hon. Members the consideration he is giving, and has been giving since June, to four possible sites in the Thames Estuary for the runways of the third London Airport. I have been most concerned to represent the strong views of my constituents in North-East Kent that the noise nuisance arising from the third London Airport should be removed from them as far as possible.
My purpose this afternoon is not to try to debate the content of this important matter, but to state strongly that I feel that we have not enough time to consider it if, as I understand, an announcement is to be made tomorrow.
My hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine), who spoke with his usual moderation and


restraint made a number of points earlier this afternoon. We must remember that he is talking about something that will happen in his constituency. It is not an ordinary happening. It is not only the biggest planning decision of this century, but I believe by far the biggest planning and construction event in this country since the Fire of London in 1666.
The organisation of the business of the House is such that we are rather pushed between now and when the House rises tomorrow, and all that we shall be allowed is a statement tomorrow. I had understood my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House when I questioned him last Thursday to say that there would be a statement this week and an opportunity for question and answer. I had assumed that he meant that there would be a full opportunity for question and answer by a full House of Commons, but it will not be a full House tomorrow. Tomorrow is a private Member's day, and the House will not be full.
We appreciate that my right hon. Friend, administering the business of the House in the interests of hon. Members, is faced with a great log jam not only of Bills to get through but of questions and statements. But my constituents feel that to be left at the end of the quene like this is not good enough. I hope that tomorrow we shall hear a statement from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment about the decision on where the third London Airport is to be. Many of us in North-East Kent—some half-dozen Members—as well as my hon. Friends the Members for Essex, South-East, Southend, East (Sir S. McAdden) and Southend, West (Mr. Channon) are very concerned about what that decision will be, and we should have liked an opportunity to question my right hon. Friend very closely.
The seriousness of this latter decision concerning the third London Airport has perhaps not penetrated the House or even the Government Front Bench. When it was decided a year ago not to put the airport north-east or north-west of London but to put it in the Thames Estuary, that was not the end of the affair—not for us in Essex and in Kent. It was the beginning of our problems. We had to weather the storm. Our constituents said "You have lost a battle. You did

not fight as well as the Members for Buckinghamshire. Why not? Were your public relations not effective enough? Was not your campaign against the Government's decision rich enough?"

Sir Bernard Braine: I hope that my hon. Friend's powerful argument is reaching my right hon. Friends in the Government. Does he not agree that on this issue we have been given repeated promises by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment that we should be consulted at every turn, and that it is for that reason that it is not satisfactory for a statement of the kind envisaged to be made on the very last day of our sitting, when, if it turns out to be unfavourable to the points we have been urging upon my right hon. Friend for many months, we have no opportunity for redress until the House returns in the autumn? It will then be too late.

Mr. Crouch: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because these are the points which I am seeking to impress on the House.
It is very important to us to have the opportunity to represent our views and those of our constituents to my right hon. Friends the Leader of the House and the Secretary of State and to the whole Cabinet. It is a Cabinet decision, not just a minor decision but a decision of tremendous importance.
When the decision was made nearly a year ago that the airport should not be sited at an in-shore site but should be put out on an off-shore site, it had one merit—that the Government were thinking environmentally, that they were thinking of removing the noise nuisance from people, households, schools, places of work and farms. They were recognising the serious problems of noise produced by an airport, and were putting that noise as far away as possible. I believe that even my hon. Friends in Essex would agree, notwithstanding the nearness of the problem to them, that it was a brave decision to go to Foulness, the Thames Estuary, to an off-shore site.
Whilst I showed some irritation at that decision at the time, I told my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, and made public my view, that I approved the decision fundamentally environmentally. But if we are to


have an environmental decision like that backed up all the way, it must be supported by choosing a site which really is out to sea and not one placed on the very shore line and nearest to Kent.
My right hon. Friend and his colleagues in the Department have promised those of us in Kent and Essex that he will keep in close touch with us and listen to our views. I can honestly say that in the last year he has done that. He has afforded us every opportunity to represent our points of view. But I am concerned now that in the last overs of this innings of Parliament we are going in at No. 11 and that all we shall have tomorrow is a chance to make it a draw. In my opinion, we shall not win the battle, but I must warn my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to convey to the Secretary of State that if we do not get a decision tomorrow that satisfies our real and anxious concern we cannot let the matter rest there. This is a matter of very serious concern, and it is not only a matter for Kent and Essex but a matter for the House of Commons.

6.1 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I support the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine) and the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) because I, too, have a peripheral interest in the subject of the third London Airport. My ground for opposing the Motion is the same as that of the hon. Member for Canterbury—that this is all being done at the last moment, the day before we adjourn for the Summer Recess. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) suggested that the Motion could have been put down on the last day, but it could not have been because it asks us to agree to adjourn tomorrow.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) suggested that instead of rising at five o'clock tomorrow we should rise at six o'clock. Like you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I have been sitting here the whole afternoon, and if only one of the matters suggested were to be discussed tomorrow even six o'clock would not be late enough. My hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) has raised legitimate concern about lower-paid engineering workers in Government ordnance factories, and he was supported by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport

(Dame Joan Vickers). Such a debate alone could take two or three hours, quite legitimately and worthily. Again, the question of the airport at Foulness could easily take up a two or three-hour debate.
I accuse the Government of deliberately leaving the statement about the airport until the last moment when it could, and should, have been made earlier. They have done so in the hope, as the hon. Member for Canterbury rightly pointed out, that only a few hon. Members will be present tomorrow—indeed, only the local Members. What will happen? The local Members concerned will raise their questions in the full knowledge that the rest of the day is devoted to Adjournment debates. Those hon. Members with Adjournment debates will naturally be anxious to get on with their debates, and they will be saying "Keep quiet" or "Shut up", or "Do not ask any more questions". Thus, the Members concerned do not even get a proper opportunity to raise the legitimate questions which need to be asked. It is no good the Leader of the House suggesting that it is not normal practice to give longer notice of such a Motion. It is the practice to give as long notice as possible. We agree that there has been some difficulty here but in future longer notice should be given.

Mr. R. Carr: I am anxious to give as long notice as possible but—to be fair to me and to the Government—perhaps the hon. Gentleman could give a specific example of when longer notice has been given.

Mr. Lewis: I think the right hon. Gentleman will find that longer notice was given before the Christmas Recess. I remember that longer notice has been given on many occasions over the last 28 years.

Mr. Carr: indicated dissent.

Mr. Lewis: The right hon. Gentleman may shake his head but he can look up the record. He will find that very often Amendments to Motions similar to this one have been put down. That means that there must have been time for the Motion to be seen and considered. Because this Motion appeared on the Order Paper only today and we are debating it immediately, we have been unable to put


down an Amendment to it. I myself have put down Amendments to such Motions in the past. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) has also done so. However, I do not want to go into this in detail. I want to get to the important point which my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton raised and for which he was attacked, although he is perfectly right. I want to put the point a different way, however.
There is a right hon. Member of this House who has not had an opportunity of defending himself. I shall not go into the Poulson inquiry as such. What I am concerned about is an attack upon the Government and Ministers. I want to attack the Government as a whole and the Attorney-General, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the Leader of the House and the Prime Minister, because I have been writing to them all to ask them for an opportunity for the House to be given the facts and the situation to be investigated. We are being told that there is a police inquiry, but a police inquiry does not make the subject sub judice. It does not, and should not, stop an opportunity from being given to the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) to have his say. He should have his say.
The right hon. Member for Barnet is an honourable gentleman. He resigned as Home Secretary when he found that there was to be the Poulson inquiry. I have written to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House. I have written to everyone I can think of to find out what has been happening to the Real Estate Fund of America. It had two or three rather shady companies connected with it. Some British people lost their money and their savings in those companies.
When the right hon. Member for Barnet resigned because of the impending police inquiries into the Poulson case he said, rightly, that he would not like to be in office while those inquiries were going on. He also said that he has not made a statement to the police, who, he claims, have been investigating the Real Estate Fund of America. I have been trying to get from the Government some facts and figures, which is why I want extra time tomorrow. I would hope then

to be able to get information which I have not so far been able to get in writing. If we had a few hours extra tomorrow, perhaps the Leader of the House could tell me when the police started investigating the Real Estate Fund of America and its subsidiary companies working in this country. When did they start investigating? Whom did they investigate? Did they investigate all the directors? Did the investigation take place during the time that the right hon. Member for Barnet was Home Secretary? If it did, why was he not given an opportunity of putting his side of the case?
I am now attacking the Government because the Government are preventing the right hon. Member for Barnet from giving his own side and his evidence to the police. I can only go by what I have read in the Press, and the right hon. Gentleman is reported as saying that he has not been allowed to give his side of the story. That is a terrible situation.
I have been interested in this question of company irregularities. I am not singling out one or two. Last week in the House I mentioned about 30. The Minister for Trade did not answer. He evaded the issue. He dodged it and then went outside and made a statement to the Press denying what was quite possible for him to have denied in the Chamber. I would like a couple of hours extra tomorrow so that the Minister for Trade could make the statement in the House that he made outside last week immediately after he had been given an opportunity to make it in the Chamber when I was present. Let him make it tomorrow. I have sent the right hon. Gentleman 50 or 60 letters which I have received since that debate. They are about various other companies about which the Department has taken no action. We had the spectacle of the Attorney-General going into the Poulson case. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry also went in. He was able to rush over there very quickly but he has not rushed in to look after the interests of the investors in all these companies.
I ask the Leader of the House to get the Minister for Trade to come clean and be honest. If the Government could be honest that would be helpful, but they are the most dishonest, crooked Government we have had for years. They


deliberately mislead the House. They misled the House yesterday. I asked how many companies were not sending in their returns according to the Companies Acts.

Mr. Keith Stainton: Very many.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: The Minister said he could not give the figures. Why? He said it would take too much time and money. That means there are many, and here I agree with the hon. Member for Sudbury and Woodbridge (Mr. Stainton). It means there are thousands of them breaking the law, not for one day or one month, but year after year, and not a thing is being done by the Government to bring these culprits to court. But the poor old docker—within five minutes he is in Pentonville! Action is soon taken against these people.

Mr. R. Carr: Since the number of cases being brought by the Board of Trade against companies under the Companies Acts was very much greater last year than two or three years ago I presume that the hon. Gentleman's party when in Government two or three years ago was even more dishonest?

Mr. Lewis: If the Minister had been here during that debate or had read it he would have seen that I said that this was a continuing problem. I attacked the Department for deliberately neglecting this over the years, under both Governments. I said that this is deliberate dishonesty on the part of this Government in not giving me the figures which are available. The Minister knows that there have been 80 cases in the last two years. There are hundreds of cases that could, and should have been dealt with involving crooked directors, deliberately fleecing the public.
I would have liked time for a debate on maladministration and neglect by the Department of Health and Social Security. I wrote asking for an investigation into the death of a constituent of mine in hospital. It took the Secretary of State for Social Services a fortnight to send me an acknowledgement, and that was signed by a secretary to a Private Secretary. This is not good enough. This is when the House is sitting and I have a chance to protest. When the House goes into recess I have no means of protesting. I resent the fact

that the right hon. Gentleman should get the secretary to a secretary to send a letter and take a fortnight to tell me what I already knew; namely, that the local hospital had held an inquiry. I do not want the local hospital to hold an inquiry into how and why one of my constituents met his death. I want an independent inquiry.
The Attorney-General can do things when it suits him. If we had a couple of extra hours the Attorney-General could get interested in a unique case that I have for him. Briefly, it is this. We had a detective inspector of police—and I will name him if names need to be given—who was on duty—and I emphasise "duty". He was having sexual intercourse with a prisoner's wife and had a two-way radio to the station. This is police activity. It may sound laughable but this is true. This man was eventually brought before a police disciplinary board. What happened? His own colleagues from the station investigated the case and found it proved. They found that he had broken a number of police regulations, and then he was conveniently advised to retire.
He retired and no one was able to trace him. There was an article about this in the Sunday People last April. One of my constituents who is in prison serving a seven-year sentence, who always claimed that he was "framed" by the police, happened to read this article. He said "This is the detective inspector who I said framed me. When this man came into court to give evidence against me, I said his word was not to be believed, but the court took his word." My constituent asked for this man to be interviewed to get a statement. But, no. The Attorney-General, the Home Secretary, the police, all refused to allow this man to be interviewed. He was conveniently told to get out of the force. He resigned and no action was taken. He was also found guilty of breaking and entering while on police duty.
Now the man has vanished or so the police say. I have been able to find out where he is, and I have asked the Attorney-General to give me some facts and figures and to say whether he will take action to see whether my constituent cannot have a retrial. I cannot get anything from the Attorney-General. If we were to come back a couple of hours


earlier tomorrow, that case could be raised.
Later we shall be discussing the emergency regulations. I may not be able to get into that debate, but if we had a couple of extra hours tomorrow I could mention some of the problems confronting my dockers who are on strike. They say that they cannot get free milk, to which they claim to be entitled. They also claim to have difficulties over social security payments for themselves and their families. All of this could be discussed if we had an extra couple of hours tomorrow. If their complaints are true there could be a lot of trouble created after we go into recess, if we eventually do.
The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition challenged one another on the effects of the Housing Finance Act. To this moment we do not know what will happen to rents. We shall be going into recess knowing that there will be all sorts of difficulties such as rent strikes. Before we come back there will probably be some riots in certain parts of the country. We could have the opportunity of arguing out tomorrow whether it will be a 5 per cent., 10 per cent. or 14 per cent. increase in rent.
Another question which I would have liked to raise is that of gazumping. We were told that we were to have a report. Where is it? We have not got it and no action has been taken. In addition, we have the amazing spectacle of the so-called Industrial Relations Court meeting, adjourning, reaching a decision, countermanding it, altering it, not knowing whether it could do this or that. Now that we have a strike the Industrial Relations Court, it is suggested, should go on holiday for two or three months. The judges have had their salaries almost doubled but they are going on holiday. When we have trouble like this we ought to have the opportunity of deciding whether that court should go on holiday for two or three months. Should it not be kept open in case it is needed to give help and succour to the striking dockers, because the Official Solicitor might not be available?
There has been a growing practice on the part of almost all Departments and all Ministers of creating an interminable

delay in dealing with correspondence. I do not know whether other hon. Members can bear me out but I find that it takes almost a fortnight to get an interim reply, which is usually a paraphrase of the original complaint, saying that it is being investigated. It then takes four, five or six weeks to get replies to matters which could be dealt with within seven or eight days. I am not blaming Ministers. Perhaps the civil servants should be kicked. But if this sort of thing happens when the House is sitting and we can raise matters and take action, what will it be like when we are in recess? I hope that the Leader of the House will send a directive to all Departments telling them that they should ensure that Members' letters are dealt with expeditiously.
Those are just some of the reasons why I hope that tomorrow we shall have an extra two or three hours to discuss the matters to which I have referred and many other subjects which I could deal with if time permitted.

6.20 p.m.

Mr. Ernle Money: Like most hon. Members, I have been looking forward with increasing anticipation—and I hope that the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) will not take it too personally when I say that it became a crescendo in the last 20 minutes to the recess. However, I am unhappy about going on holiday without having one matter discussed in the House; namely, the grave situation which has arisen in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Sudbury and Woodbridge (Mr. Stainton) concerning the arbitrary suggestion for the closure of Ransomes and Rapier. I hope that a Minister will be able to tell the House tomorrow that some assurance can be given about the undertaking which can be expected from Newton Chambers, of Sheffield, as to what it intends to do about this old and honourable firm with a tradition of more than 200 years in engineering in the Ipswich area.
Nothing has created more anger or more continuing shock in the constituencies of my hon. Friend the Member for Sudbury and Woodbridge and myself than the way in which the decision was made—totally in breach of the Code of Industrial Practice; against a background of 100 years service from the work force


at the Waterside works; against a background of one day lost in the last 20 years as a result of industrial dispute; and against the background of a 30 per cent. increase in productivity over the last three years.
One has only to look in New Palace Yard to see the great cranes carrying the word "Rapier"—albeit "NCK Rapier"—to realise the part which this firm has played in the tradition of engineering in this country. The sudden decision to axe more than 700 jobs in Ipswich in circumstances in which no Minister at the Department of Employment or the Department of Trade and Industry was consulted and in which there was no consultation before the original announcement of the proposals, with the work force or with any of the local interested parties came as a tremendous blow to the pride of an old industry and of the town itself. But it was more than that because it threatened to put at risk the livelihood of 700 people. It was a shock out of the blue.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sudbury and Woodbridge and I have tabled many Questions to the Departments of Trade and Industry and Employment, some of which have been answered. In particular, four which were answered on 1st August go to the heart of the problem with which we are faced.
The first Question asked
what proposals were made by the directors of Newton Chambers during
the Secretary of State for Employment's
recent discussions … concerning … alternative viable solutions to provide full-time employment at the Waterside works".
My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was able to say only this:
My right hon. Friend the Minister for Industrial Development has been told that plans exist for redevelopment of the site for industry and commerce, as well as for housing if a decision is made to close Waterside works".
My next Question
asked the Secretary of State for Employment what proposals were made to him by the directors of Newton Chambers … regarding the suggested closure of Ransomes and Rapier … whether he is satisfied
that it would create, as had been suggested in the Press by the chairman of Newton Chambers, 2,000 new jobs for

Ipswich. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State replied:
my right hon. Friend the Minister for Industrial Development did not discuss the basis of this estimate".
When I asked what undertaking had been given and whether
it would be a condition of sale for any proposed development of the Waterside works site that a substantial part of this would be used for engineering industries with a high demand for labour",
my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary replied that no such undertaking had been sought. When asked what the position was concerning the undertakings given by the directors of Newton Chambers about the suggested closure with regard to
an overall plan to be put forward by them to produce employment opportunities of the sort needed in Ipswich on the site of Waterside works",
my hon. Friend said that, although the Minister was aware of plans to redevelop the Waterside works site,
No specific proposals involving my Department have been put forward."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st August, 1972; Vol. 842, c. 89–90.]
The Departments concerned were not consulted in the first place. I hope that a Minister will be able to announce that the Department will seek a firm undertaking from the directors of Newton Chambers that consultation—and consultation of a kind which neither my hon. Friend the Member for Sudbury and Woodbridge nor I have been able to obtain over the last few weeks—with Sir Peter Robinson, the chairman or the directors of Newton Chambers will be demanded and that undertakings will be obtained from them that the use of phrases like "2,000 new jobs for Ipswich" and phrases bandying about future jobs for my constituents mean something and are not simply window dressing.

6.26 p.m.

Mr. Clinton Davis: I urge the Home Secretary that a statement should be made on two matters before the House adjourns. The first relates to the report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee. A number of legal organisations have made the strongest representations to the Secretary of State that this far-reaching report should not be incorporated in the Government's legislation for the new Session until all


the relevant views of those organisations have been carefully considered by the Government.
I have tabled a number of Questions for Written Answer on this matter, and I received a reply only a few moments ago to the following effect:
The Home Office invited views by early October from a number of organisations with a special interest in the Report because the Government was anxious to have those views as soon as possible. Some of the organisations have indicated that they would have difficulty in formulating their views fully by then, and it has been made clear to them that representations received later will be taken into consideration.
That does not go nearly far enough.
What these organisations—which include the Criminal Bar Association, a group of lawyers most intimately connected with the subject—require from the Home Secretary is an assurance that the Government will not prepare legislation until their views have been taken properly into account. They want an undertaking from the Government that until those views have been formulated there will be no commitment to the introduction of legislation. That is not what the reply to my Question has produced. These organisations were asked to submit their observations by October. They formed the view that the Government had already committed themselves to accepting the basic tenets of the report.
There can be no doubt that this is a very far-reaching report. It makes radical proposals for changing our criminal law and for procedure and the giving of evidence in criminal cases. There can be no doubt that many of its recommendations are extremely controversial and that the controversy extends not merely to the barristers and solicitors but to the judges. Lord Devlin has been very critical about the terms of the report. I do not wish to develop an argument now—it would not be proper for me to do so—about the controversial nature of the proposed Bill in the report, but the Home Secretary should give the clearest possible undertaking, if not tonight, then tomorrow, that a commitment to the introduction of legislation will in no circumstances be included in the Queen's Speech.
The Committee started its deliberations in 1964 and took about eight years. Yet

the Secretary of State is expecting the legal profession, the National Council for Civil Liberties, the magistrates and the rest to make their observations within weeks. He says "We will listen to observations that are made later"; but what effect will be given to those observations if the Government have already made their commitment? I hope, therefore, that the Secretary of State will be a little more forthcoming in his reply tonight.
The second matter to which I wish to allude briefly is the Housing Finance Act. Councils which are faced with an enormous decision are entitled before we enter into the recess to a clear statement from the Government of the likely financial implications of adhering to the Act.
The effect of a letter sent recently by the Prime Minister to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was that the net average result of the Act would be to increase rents by about 7½ per cent. in the next year. I suggest that that was a misleading statement and that the figures upon which the Prime Minister relied were bogus for the following reasons. The Prime Minister was pressed on this matter this afternoon but he deliberately avoided giving clearcut answers. First, those calculations do not appear to have taken into account that since last April about 1 million tenants have faced rent increases of 50p. The second factor that was not taken into proper consideration was that the basis of the 7½ per cent. figure included millions of private tenants to whom the Act will not apply immediately but who will eventually be affected by it.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition adduced evidence to suggest that, even looking at those conclusions, the Prime Minister was wrong in his assertion and that the real increase to be faced by council tenants—which was the question put to the Prime Minister by my right hon. Friend—was in the region of 13 per cent.
It is clear from the Prime Minister's replies and from replies by the Minister for Housing and Construction that the Government have done no research into the subject and are unable to adduce convincing evidence about the nature of the rent increases. Yet councils are being asked to make a decision while the House


is in recess. Notices of increases in rent have to go out and all the machinery is required to be put into operation, although the Government have not done their homework. That is a disgraceful imposition for the Government to make upon councillors and tenants when they have not done the research to justify the conclusions they have reached purely for the sake of party political dogma.

6.34 p.m.

Mr. David Stoddart: I support the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) and my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) in their plea for low-paid workers and low-paid industrial civil servants. I recently received a deputation of members of my organisation, the Electrical, Electronic and Telecommunication Union—Plumbing Trades Union, who were incensed at the treatment they were receiving from the Government on this issue. Those workers have been hard done by over a long period; they are expecting a statement tomorrow before the House goes into recess and they are entitled to receive one.
Those workers are highly responsible. They do not freely take industrial action. They have been overlooked and swept aside by the Treasury. The Treasury has told them that there is no Treasury money available for them, and they take it hardly. They have also taken hardly the statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—who is responsible for keeping them at their low wage level—that the workers are holding the country to ransom. They know that on their wages of less than £20 a week they are not holding anyone to ransom, let alone the country.
I have received a letter from the workers of Aldermaston who are incensed at being kept behind because there is no Treasury money available for them. My impression is that there is plenty of Treasury money available. Earlier this year largesse amounting to nearly £2,000 million was paid out, mainly to better-off people. But these industrial civil servants are being refused proper consideration because the Treasury says there is no money—the same Treasury that has disbursed £2,000 million.
These workers have a good case. Over the last 10 years industrial civil servants have seen the differentials between them

and other people widening from £30 per annum to £500 per annum, and they are now in the low-wage category. It is the Government's duty, and it will be seen as their duty by the workers involved, to make a statement at the Dispatch Box tomorrow which gives fair treatment to their own employees.

6.38 p.m.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell: It was my intention to speak on the second Motion but I think it would be for the convenience of the House for me to speak now. I hope that you will show me a certain amount of tolerance, Mr. Speaker, if I stray slightly beyond the bounds.
I hope that the Secretary of State for the Environment will make a statement tomorrow about the Government's intentions on spiralling housing land prices, particularly in the South Hampshire and Southampton area. I will emphasise the urgency of the problem by telling the story of one house. It is a house in Southampton which was built in May, 1970, and sold at that time for £5,250. It was resold in April, 1971, for £8,000. It was resold again in July, 1972, for £12,500. In two years of Tory Government the price of one house in my area has risen from £5,250 to £12,500. In the last 15 months the price rose by £4,500—in other words, by £300 a month or £75 a week. That shows the urgency of the problem. By the time we return from the Summer Recess house prices in Southern Hampshire will probably have risen by another £300.
This situation makes it quite impossible for young people in my area to buy houses. By the time they have saved their deposit for the house they would like to buy, they find that they need double the amount they have saved since the house itself has doubled in value. The position is becoming very serious. For example, teachers who take on jobs in Southampton cannot find a house which they can afford and subsequently have to withdraw. These difficulties are faced by people in local government who want to move to the area and also by employees in private industry.
The situation has become so serious that the Chief Education Officer of Southampton and other officials have had to draw the council's attention to the


problem. They have asked the housing committee to make special arrangements and to reserve houses for would-be employees who cannot find houses at prices they can afford. The same applies to industry. One firm in Southampton took on a young, energetic executive in his twenties and he, too, had to withdraw because he could not obtain a house on a mortgage he could afford. This is a serious problem and is growing more serious every day. I hope that the Leader of the House will prevail upon his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment to come to the House tomorrow to say what action he intends to take.
Secondly, I wish to re-emphasise some of the points made a little earlier by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. James Hill). I wish particularly to mention the serious position of ship repairing in Southampton. We are one of the few major ship repairing areas which are not in a development area. Therefore we get no regional employment premium or all the other aids which go to development areas. Because for many years Southampton was a passenger port we came to rely on carrying out repairs to the big liners, to the "Queens" which used to sail from Southampton. Many overhauls of those great ships were carried out in Southampton. However, the passenger side of the port is now being phased out and they are being replaced by container ships. Container ships are new and obviously will not require major repairs within the next few years. Therefore, ship repairing in the port faces a serious situation. The number of men employed in ship repairing in Southampton has declined dramatically in the last five or six years.
We have heard the recent sad news about the proposal by the Trafalgar Company which now owns Cunard to have its ships built abroad. I urge the Leader of the House to ask his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry or the Chancellor of the Exchequer to come to the House tomorrow to say that he proposes to impose severe tax penalties on British ship owners who go to foreign yards to build their ships. It is scandalous that a company like Cunard, which has had £17 million of taxpayers' money poured

into the building of the "QE2", should now announce that it intends to build ships overseas. This is a disgraceful situation and I hope we shall have an announcement about severe penalties for such practices.
I hope that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will make a statement tomorrow announcing that he proposes to set up a full-scale inquiry into our ship repairing industry.

6.45 p.m.

Mr. Michael Cocks: I urge the Leader of the House to ask his right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries to amplify the statement which he made on 27th July. That statement dealt with railway finances and in the final paragraph the right hon. Gentleman, in what virtually amounted to a codicil, said that he had approved British Railways proposals for the restructuring of field organisation. Then, as an aside, he mentioned that this would mean further staff reductions of between 4,500 and 6,500. A change of this magnitude should surely merit more explanation than that to which the House was treated on 27th July. Some 700 of these jobs are in Bristol and many of the people affected have already moved two or three times.
The Minister has a duty by Section 45 of the 1968 Act to make sure that any proposals submitted by the Railways Board are in the interests of the most efficient running of the railways. I tabled a Question to the Minister asking him to make public the material submitted by the board in support of its reorganisation proposals but he refused to do so. I ask the Leader of the House to urge the Minister for Transport Industries most strongly and in the public interest to make this information available and also to make a statement. Although I asked for further details, I am afraid that all I was given were stonewalling replies.
Those who are involved in this reorganisation process are reasonable people. If they were shown that the reorganisation were based on a proper economic structure and were also satisfied that it involved proper managerial efficiency, although it may be inconvenient no doubt those people would accept it with as good grace as they could muster. However, it is surely reasonable


that they should be given some information as to why this action was thought to be necessary, particularly when national unemployment is so great.
It is true that the TSSA has been consulted nationally but, for example, in relation to the location of territorial headquarters it is impossible for the union to take sides for one city against another. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to think about this matter extremely seriously. If reorganisation is to take place, it must be carried out with the support of those concerned. That support will be much more forthcoming, and the morale will be much higher, if people can see that the whole process has been carried out on sound managerial grounds. Therefore, even at this late stage I hope that the Leader of the House will ask his right hon. Friend to come to the House and make a statement about the situation.

6.49 p.m.

Mr. Michael Foot: I believe it right that we should deal with these Motions in this way and I am sure that if we can compress the two debates into one hon. Members will not have any objection. This course will be helpful because we shall shortly have an extremely important debate on the national emergency. I must remind the House that we are now in a national emergency. Indeed, national emergencies are becoming so frequent under the Conservative Government that we now hardly notice them. It is most essential that this subject should be fully discussed before the House goes into recess and I hope that the House will reach that important debate as speedily as possible.
All the matters that have been discussed so far have been extremely important. The hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) asked what was to happen to the Royal dockyards and what treatment would be given to industrial civil servants generally, and her appeal was fortified by the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Swindon (Mr. David Stoddart) and Tottenham, (Mr. Atkinson). I hope that the Minister will be able to assure the House that a full statement will be given tomorrow, if he himself is not able to make such a statement now, because the case that has been put is very powerful, and from what I know of

Devonport the people there will certainly require an answer from the Government.
Those of us who represent steel constituencies are extremely anxious, as was the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Money) and other hon. Members, about the employment situation. Throughout the steel constituencies we are extremely concerned, the more so when we listened to the Prime Minister's attempt today to shuffle off his responsibilities in this matter. I presume, and one imagines that the Leader of the House will give an assurance at once, that there will not be any statement of Government policy affecting the steel industry generally whilst the House is in recess. I imagine that the Government will make it quite clear that such a statement would have to be made in the House of Commons itself. Indeed, many of us from steel constituencies will be making representations to the British Steel Corporation and to the Government during the period of the Summer Recess precisely because we are so anxious about statements that have been made regarding the industry generally.
I have no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman will also tell us what arrangements exist for dealing with the recall of the House. I understand that if the national emergency were to continue for 28 days the House would have to be recalled automatically in any case. Again, if there were a further deterioration of the situation in Northern Ireland the House would have to be recalled, as it had to be recalled on the last occasion.
Therefore, while I hope that the House will speedily pass this Motion and the Motion which follows it so that we may enter on the debate on the national emergency, it will do so in the knowledge that circumstances are such that the House may have to be recalled before the date specified in the second Motion. We hope that that will not be necessary, but I am sure that the Government will give us the assurance that the proper proceedings will be followed for such a recall if it were to prove necessary.

6.52 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department, Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Robert Can): I at once give the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) the assurance for which


he has asked. We are proposing only to adjourn, as we usually do at this time of year. There is a well-designed procedure for recall which has sometimes been used in previous years and could be used again if it were necessary. I am sure we all share the hon. Gentleman's hope that that necessity will not arise, but the procedure for recall is there.
The hon. Gentleman spoke of the problems of the steel industry, which were also referred to during Prime Minister's Questions. All I say there is that all hon. Members, including particularly, if I may say so, right hon. and hon. Members on the Opposition side, should remember that the purpose of the nationalisation Act which they advocated and brought in was, among other things, to produce the rationalisation as well as the modernisation of the steel industry which they claimed needed to be done under a nationalised body if it were to be done at all. They, having brought in such an Act, ought not in my view to make some of the remarks they do when the very purposes for which they brought in the Act are brought to fulfilment by the British Steel Corporation, which they themselves set up.
All these changes and redundancies are of immense importance to the people involved; and not only to the actual workers unfortunately involved but to the communities in which they live, and to the whole social and economic structure of areas where great industries have grown up in the past and where, because of age and change to modern methods, some old plants have to die and new plants go elsewhere.
I can say on behalf of the Government that we will constantly represent to the British Steel Corporation—though I do not believe that the corporation needs it, as it already thinks this way—the need for maximum notice, and for maximum consultation not only with the unions but with local councils and with community interests in all the areas where closures may have to take place, because these are an unfortunate, painful and very difficult concomitant of the process of rationalisation and modernisation of a basic industry such as steel.

Mr. John Mendelson: Does the right hon. Gentleman intend to

respond to the request of my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) that the major statement that is expected should not be made during the Summer Recess but should be made in Parliament when Parliament is in session?

Mr. Carr: I noted that request, and the House can assume that any major policy statements for which the Government have responsibility will be made to the House. But there is this differentiation, which I must keep bringing to the attention of the House, between the responsibility of the Government and the responsibility of the British Steel Corporation as laid down in the Act of Parliament passed by the Labour Government. Any major statement of policy by the present Government will certainly be made to the House.

Mr. Kaufman: The right hon. Gentleman will understand, I am sure, that the long-term plan, which is the British Steel Corporation's decision, will also require Government decision, and that it would be very inconvenient for those hon. Members interested in the steel industry and who have constituency interests in it if the long-term plan were to be announced later this month or in September when hon. Members on both sides would not be able to comment on it in Parliament until October at the earliest. I trust that the Leader of the House will bear this aspect in mind and pass it on to Lord Melchett.

Mr. Carr: I will make sure that Lord Melchett sees the remarks on this subject not only of the hon. Gentleman but of other hon. Members. Again, however, I must draw a distinction between the responsibility of the Government and the responsibility of the corporation. If we want a progressive and efficient steel industry for the future, as I am sure we all do, however much we may disagree about the method, we cannot get to a situation in which a nationalised board cannot conduct its own statutory obligations and exercise its statutory powers except when Parliament is sitting. If that were to happen year in and year out nationalisation would be a disaster. I do not believe that the Opposition ask for that, and I am glad to see the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. John Mendelson) shaking his head in a way that in this case means that he agrees with the


few remarks I have been making on the subject.
In this debate we have had some 16 speeches. If I were to reply to all the points raised in all of them we should not get on to other important matters which the House has before it, so I shall have to pick and choose a little and skate rather quickly over many matters.
The debate started with some charges against the behaviour of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. I am glad to say that at least one of the hon. Members concerned has since, by a letter in his absence, which is now explained, told me that this was due to a partial misunderstanding. It is only fair that I should put on record that part at least of that charge has been withdrawn.
The position about that is that my right hon. Friend, I think inadvertently, made a mistake in saying that it was the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Scotland to make the announcement. Of course it is the responsibility of the chairman of the appropriate generating board. That was a mistake in an off-the-cuff reply which caused some confusion. It would have been improper for either of my right hon. Friends to have made the statement. It could be made only by the chairman of the generating board.

Mr. Maclennan: That being so, why did the Minister of State, Scottish Office—Lord Polwarth—give the letter to Lord Hoy two hours before the Press conference in the course of which the chairman of the hydro board made his statement?

Mr. Carr: I was about to come to that. It is fairly long-established practice that, when it is known that certain hon. Members of this House or of another place are keenly interested in a public decision of this kind, as a matter of courtesy Ministers often write to them. In this case the time co-ordination seems to have got a little ahead of itself. Again I apologise for it, but I hope the House will agree that there was nothing evil or sinister in what happened. It was really as a result of trying to be too courteous rather than the reverse.
Another matter raised earlier concerned the Poulson bankruptcy proceedings. A number of charges were made by the hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) and

the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis)—and reference was made to those charges by the hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman)—to the effect that the courts were being interfered with or that the thought was growing that the courts were being interfered with. I must deny those insinuations both in general and in particular.
It is one of the oldest tricks in the world to start a canard, and then to report on the fact that it is about, saying what a pity it is and that it ought to be stopped. Those who start the canard should ask themselves where the rights and wrongs lie. All that I wish to do is to deny categorically any insinuation that the Government are in any way interfering with the courts either in this or in any other case.
What my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General did in this case was in his capacity as Attorney-General, to be represented in the bankruptcy proceedings in order to make representations, as is perfectly in order, that in view of the very widespread nature of the police investigations and the great interest and publicity that they were arousing, he wished to suggest to the court that it might be in the interests of justice to adjourn the hearing. The court did not listen to his plea, but there was nothing wrong in making the plea. My right hon. and learned Friend made it perfectly properly as Attorney- General. Having heard the plea the court showed its independence and, in its wisdom, decided to turn it down. But there was nothing wrong or improper in the plea being made.
In this connection there was a request that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General should come to the House tomorrow and say that he would expedite the whole business. I have to tell the House that that would not be proper simply because this is a matter for the courts. I am afraid that I must turn down that request firmly.
My hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braille) and my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) raised the matter of the Maplin Airport on behalf of other hon. Members with a close interest who were in the House today. I am sure that the


House is grateful that all those hon. Members involved allowed two of their hon. Friends to be their spokesmen and to make clear that their interests were shared by others. I assure my hon. Friends that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment definitely will make a statement in the House tomorrow. There is no doubt about that. I had intended to indicate that before. It may be that I used language which was too parliamentary and therefore did not get the message across with the definiteness that I intended.
I take note of the dissatisfaction that the statement should be made on the day that the House rises for the Summer Recess. I say only that very complicated considerations are involved affecting amenities, air traffic requirements and defence requirements because of the defence installations at Shoeburyness. These are extremely complicated matters which the Government have been going into urgently, striving to make a decision as quickly as possible, and determined to make it and to announce something before the House rose. I am sorry that we have only won the race against time by a short head.
I shall convey the depth of my hon. Friends' feelings to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. However, the fact that the House is now to be in recess for a few weeks will not, I suspect, deny the opportunity for further questioning and debate about this matter. The target date for the airport coming into operation is 1980. There will have to be legislation. Long before we get to the point of legislation and irreversible commitments, I am sure that my hon. Friends and others will find opportunities to raise these matters again if they think it necessary and that the silence will be merely a short interruption in the parliamentary process that we all understand.
My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury also referred to the Channel Tunnel. I ought to make it clear that there can be no decision about proceeding with the construction of the tunnel until next year. There can be no definite decision until then, and certainly there cannot be one during the recess. But what may have to happen at sometime in the fairly near future—and I cannot

guarantee that this would be done only when the House was sitting—is that there has to be agreement on an Anglo-French basis with all the private interests involved about the further exploratory, feasibility study work which has to be done in order for a basic decision to be made. I cannot guarantee that none of those decisions will be made while the House is in recess. I am sure that the House will think it right that all the necessary preparatory work should be done so that a final decision on the substance can be made as soon as possible—we hope sometime next year.
Another matter raised in the debate concerned the pay negotiations for industrial civil servants. It was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) with special reference to the dockyard workers but with a wider connotation by the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson), the hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. David Stoddart) and the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale.
It is a very important pay negotiation. But I hope that the House will realise that it is one which is still in progress. An offer has been made in reply to an unquantified claim. At the moment there is deadlock. There has been talk of arbitration. Unfortunately there has been no agreement about it so far. I and those of my right hon. Friends who are chiefly concerned with it do not under-estimate the importance of the matter. It is very important. There is a long tradition of good collective bargaining in this area and we should like to see it sustained.
As a number of hon. Members have pointed out, it also raises the problem of low pay. Low pay is a matter which is very high on the agenda in the series of talks currently going on between the Government, the TUC and the CBI. One specific matter which the TUC, the CBI and the Government have jointly agreed to study is how to deal with the problem of low pay. We cannot assist in the problem of low pay if at the same time we do not face the problem of differentials. If every time wages at the lower level are raised those above go up by the same percentage and those increases are in total inflationary and therefore bring about increases in prices, we are leaving low pay problems untouched because wage increases are


merely taking place at a more inflationary level.

Mr. Atkinson: We should get the record right. The Government's offer to the industrial civil service is £1·50 right across the board. Therefore, they are not maintaining the differentials. I hope the right hon. Gentleman accepts that. The unions are saying that they will not insist on maintaining the differentials, because if the Government offered, say, £5 right across the board they would accept that.

Mr. Carr: I freely admit that but, as the hon. Gentleman is sufficiently experienced to know, repercussive effects on other industries and negotiations cannot always be disregarded. This was one reason why the Government offered arbitration in this case. It would be of great help if this were to be genuinely considered. The offer already amounts to over 8 per cent., possibly the equivalent of 9 per cent., on the total wage bill. This is a substantial increase by any standard.

Mr. Atkinson: The total amount is 6¼ per cent. If the Government are to include in the total cost the question of equal pay for women and two days' extra holiday for these people, it is just short of 8 per cent. However, the right hon. Gentleman must not make it any more than that; he is talking about 8 per cent. and no more.

Mr. Carr: I am not. Of course, all those items have to be counted in. I remember well the speech which the present Leader of the Opposition made to the TUC when the Equal Pay Bill was about to be introduced. The right hon. Gentleman made it clear that if the country chose to go for equal pay, as he and his then Government believed it should, the cost of equal pay had to be taken into account in everybody else's wages. In the end, from a quart pot one can get out only a quart. If one gives a special amount of the quart to bring about equal pay, there is less money left in the pot for men's pay. This is one of the inevitable facts of life which we cannot escape. I think I am right in saying that the total offer represents nearer 9 per cent. than 8 per cent. addition to the total wage bill of industrial civil servants. Therefore, it is an important matter.
In fairness to the Government, I think that hon. Members on both sides and the industrial civil servants should look at the history of the last three years in which we shall have been responsible for the settlement of the pay of these workers. In 1970 they had a 14 per cent. pay rise coupled with the introduction of productivity bonuses. Last year they had 8½ per cent. and this year they have got about 8½ per cent. on offer. When before have industrial civil servants had such good offers as the last three years than when the present Government have been in power?

Dame Joan Vickers: If so, they must have been considerably underpaid for years. Regarding the dockyards, it is impossible for women to have equal pay, because they work only in the colour loft. They do not work in the main dockyard on jobs with men, so this point does not occur.

Mr. Carr: I understand this is the wish of the unions involved, not just of the Government as employer. These negotiations take place at national level for the whole of the industrial Civil Service. Considering the addition to the total wage bill throughout the industrial Civil Service, the implications of equal pay cannot be disregarded. Whether this negotiating structure is right or wrong is another matter, but that is how it is. I know that is how the unions, just as much as the Government, wish it to be.
My opening words about this matter were that this is a pay negotiation of a different kind which is still in progress. It has not, alas, been finished. Therefore, we must take that into account. It is proving long and difficult, but it is still in progress and I do not think I should say any more about it. I will pass on to my various right hon. Friends concerned the anxiety of hon. Members. I am sure the House will understand how serious this matter is and the number of important national services which are affected.
I turn now to the shipbuilding and ship repairing industry. The hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. R. C. Mitchell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. James Hill) raised not only the problem of Southampton in particular but the situation more generally. The hon. Member


for Itchen, like the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), referred particularly to the intentions of the Cunard Company to place an order for its new cruise liner overseas. I know there is a parliamentary Question on that matter tomorrow, so I had better leave it to my right hon. Friend to answer rather than to try to do so for him in advance.
When British companies go abroad for their ships we ought indeed to be concerned. However, I suggest that a proper reaction should be to see what we—the Government, employers, and unions—can do to raise the level of efficiency and the standards of equipment and of work in British shipyards so that the quality, the service and the price can be competitive with yards in other countries. I do not believe that British companies order ships abroad unless, for various reasons, they feel driven to it. My right hon. Friend will in the near future be saying something about the use which he hopes to make of his new powers under the Industry Bill when it becomes an Act which will show that he is actively considering assisting in the modernisation of shipbuilding and ship repairing facilities in this country. Therefore, I assure hon. Members that this matter is in hand.
The hon. Member for Ardwick raised the serious problem of employment in the Manchester area. I should be the first to admit that it is a serious problem. However, I cannot give the hon. Gentleman any of the specific statements he wishes. As I said to him at the time of the Whitsun Adjournment, in the end the problem of Manchester, as of other areas, will be solved within the context of a growing economy and in no other way because, whatever regional powers we may have, they are no good unless the economy as a whole is expanding.
The economy as a whole is now expanding. I believe that as figures come forward we shall find that our economy is at last expanding at a rate of at least 5 per cent. per annum. The Government intend that this trend, in direct contrast with the stagnation of a number of years before, should continue. With this growth we have introduced new regional powers—I know they are not approved by all my hon. Friends—on a scale never before exceeded or equalled

in this country. The combination of these powers and the sustained growth we are determined to achieve will, I am sure, be the only way of providing answers to the problems of Manchester and other areas where unemployment is much too high.
On the theme of unemployment, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Money) raised the closing of Ransomes and Rapier by its relatively new owners, Newton Chambers. I do not think that my hon. Friend will expect me, whose departmental responsibility it happens not to be, to go into the details of the rights or wrongs of this case, but I believe that in the action he has taken and in the way he has represented the views of his constituents in this matter he has acted in the best traditions of Members of the House. It is a matter of great concern to many people in Ipswich, far beyond those who work in that company, and I shall certainly pass on to my right hon. Friends concerned my hon. Friend's request that they should seek a firm undertaking from the directors of Newton Chambers about their plans for the future.
I merely remind my hon. Friend and the House that when the Government produced the Code of Industrial Practice they paid particular attention to the matter of redundancies and laid down proper standards and guidelines for advance notice, consultations and all the rest of it. I do not know the merits of this case but I say unequivocally that if this or any other company does not abide by those standards the Government will condemn it, and condemn it without any qualification. I have no idea whether this company is keeping to those standards, but any company which does not abide by the standards laid down in the new Code of Industrial Practice is to be condemned and ought to be asked and pressed to mend its ways very quickly.
I shall not go into all the matters raised by the hon. Member for West Ham, North. He raised today, as he did the other day—he is not even here now, so I shall spend only a brief moment on this—questions about the enforcement of the Companies Acts. In 1969, the last full year of the Labour Government, the number of prosecutions against companies for failure to bring forward


accounts was 146. Last year, the first full year of the present Government, the number was 517. The Government may not be active enough yet, but it does not lie in the mouth of any hon. Gentleman opposite to accuse my right hon. Friend of lethargy, much less fraudulent behaviour, which is what the hon. Gentleman charged.
Important things were said at the end of the debate by the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen about house prices. This is a serious matter. It arises essentially because of the imbalance between supply and demand, and a big increase in house building for sale is taking place. The number of starts in the first six months of this year is no less than 40 per cent. greater than in the first six months of 1970, so we are acting on the supply side. My right hon. Friend has announced and has put into effect a plan to make more land available. The scarcity of land is one of the factors here, and so action is being taken.
The problem is serious, and I think it is worth recording that whereas in the first quarter of 1970 107,000 mortgages were granted for house purchase, of which 60,000 were for first-time purchases, in the first quarter of this year, under the present Government, the figure of 107,000 had risen to 161,000 and the number of first-time mortgages had risen from 60,000 to 90,000, an increase of no less than 50 per cent. In spite of the problem—and it is a real one—a rapid increase is taking place in house purchase by first purchasers, and this is important.
The question of gazumping was mentioned, and this too is important. The Law Commission is examining the matter, and we shall have to wait and see what it has to say, but we are aware of the seriousness of the problem.
I should like to say something of great importance to me in my other capacity

as Home Secretary. It relates to the criminal law evidence report, an issue raised by the hon. Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis). I assure the hon. Gentleman and the House that there will be proper consultation. It is true that bodies were asked to submit observations by October. I happen to believe, as my predecessor did, in fixing target dates for consultation, otherwise it takes too long, but this may have been a bit short. I have told the hon. Gentleman that views received after that date will be properly considered, and I repeat that assurance. We shall see that there is adequate time for consultation, and we have promised that there shall be a debate on this subject in advance of the Government's final decision, and certainly before the publication of Government legislation. It is far too important a matter to proceed with without the fullest consultation and debate.
I have tried to deal rather rapidly, but it still takes time, with many of the points raised by no fewer than 16 hon. Members. I hope that those hon. Members who raised points but have not had them answered will forgive me for not doing so, but I feel that I have outstayed my welcome, and I hope that the House will agree to the Motion.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House do meet tomorrow at Eleven o'clock, that no Questions be taken after Twelve o'clock, and that at Five o'clock Mr. Speaker do adjourn the House without putting any Question.

ADJOURNMENT (SUMMER)

Resolved,
That this House at its rising tomorrow do adjourn till Tuesday, 17th October.—[Mr. Murton.]

WILLS

7.26 p.m.

Mr. Greville Janner: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the law relating to the making, execution and attestation of wills.
I appreciate that this application is somewhat depressing at this stage of the Session and in particular at this stage of the evening. However. It is a matter of vast importance to literally hundreds of thousands of people, not least perhaps to hon. Members. It is also sadly appropriate at a time when people are going on holiday when they have the leisure to make wills and, alas, because of the carnage on the roads when they also have the need to make them.
It is vital that people should make wills, if only so that they will be loved by those they leave behind. Those who do not make wills find that their heirs have to obtain letters of administration, which takes much longer and is much more expensive, and in any case the complicated laws on intestacy almost always mean that the dead person does not leave his property, however little or much it may be, to those he may have wished to have it.
The object of making a will is to enable the testator's wishes to be put into effect. The trouble with the ancient, archaic formalities which tie up the law on wills is that they often frustrate the wishes of the testator himself. There are many nonsenses, of which I shall give a few examples.
The most recent appeared in the case of In re Colling (deceased) and it concerns Section 9 of the Wills Act, 1837, an ancient Act which ought to have either been properly amended or repealed a long time ago. It provides that a will shall be in writing and signed or acknowledged by the testator in the presence of two witnesses at one time who shall attest the will.
On this occasion the deceased was in hospital. He got a patient and a nurse to act as witnesses to his will. The nurse had to go out before the testator, Mr. Colling, had finished signing. Having attended to another patient, she returned and witnessed the will. The man died and the will was contested by people who

were entitled to money under a previous will but not under the new one. They won the case because the new will, which clearly expressed the intention of a perfectly sane man who was desperately ill, was of no effect. It was a nullity because the two witnesses were not together when he and they signed. This is a nonsense and the section ought to be amended. I was pleased to see that in answer to a Written Question from me, it was stated that the Lord Chancellor was giving consideration to the amendment of Section 9 of the Wills Act.
But that is not all, because there was another case in which a testator signed at the top of the will, having covered up the bottom with blotting paper so that the witnesses would not read it. There is no rule that says a witness must read a will. Indeed, there is no law that says that a witness must even know that the signature is being put to a will. Nevertheless, because the will was then signed by the testator at the top rather than at the foot, it was a nullity and it died along with the testator.
Another strange example is if the testator calls in his best friend or his friend's wife as a witness to the will and then wishes to leave him some money. The witness cannot obtain any bequest from that will. He will get nothing because he or his wife has witnessed it.
Many of these rules do not apply if the testator happens to be a soldier, sailor or airman on active service, however young he may be. The rules apply to old-age pensioners, and in the main they do not apply to a young Serviceman. If they do not apply to young Servicemen, there is no reason any more why they should apply to policemen, prison officers or Members of Parliament making their wills.
There is too much archaic out-of-date nonsense applicable to this branch of the law. Experience shows that ordinary people who make ordinary wills very often do not succeed in doing what they wish with what they leave behind. The law needs changing.
Judges have held that a will can be written on an eggshell. Why anyone would do that I do not know, but someone did. One can write one's will on a brown paper bag if one wishes. But if


one writes it on a form obtained from a local stationer, one is asking for trouble.
This is a problem we are all bound to face in due course. Are we or are we not to make a will? Testators go to a shop, buy a will form and complete it. If the testator is lucky, so will be the people to whom he leaves his money or house, however modest his possessions may be. If he is unlucky, it will have an entirely different effect.
A very strange example occurred recently. Someone I know very well was made an executor under the will of a neighbour, the neighbour's wife having predeceased him. As a result, when the neighbour died this person became guardian of the neighbour's child and acquired a child of the age of 15. This is something which quite clearly the testator never contemplated. He had never asked the person concerned whether or not he was agreeable to being an executor. The man could theoretically have renounced probate and have refused to be an executor. In practice this was not possible.
The whole law on wills requires careful consideration. Meanwhile, anyone who makes an informal will is asking for trouble. In my view, the will forms on sale should be withdrawn because they so often lead to difficulties. I shall be accused of drumming up trade for the other branch of the legal profession. I appreciate that there are certain hon. Members who regard lawyers as useful only when they themselves are in trouble.

Mr. Kevin McNamara: They themselves are lawyers.

Mr. Janner: But there are occasions when even a solicitor can be of great service to his fellow man. One of these is when there is a will to be made. A person may feel that he cannot afford to get a solicitor to draw up his will, but if his bequests and means are modest the chances are that the charges will be modest. He can obtain advice from a citizens' advice bureau, or under the Legal Aid and Advice Act or the Law Society's scheme.
A man who makes his own will is asking for trouble. A man who is his

own lawyer in this sort of case has a fool for a client. Unless and until the law is simplified, people ought to be warned. I fully appreciate that there is no chance of the Bill passing through the House this Session. However, I hope that if the House is willing to allow the introduction of the Bill, it will at least serve as a signal of concern from hon. Members and that it will also enable people to realise the importance of making a will and of making it properly.
In the circumstances, and I hope with sufficient brevity, I beg leave to introduce the Bill.

Mr. Michael Havers: I have listened with interest to the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Greville Janner). He makes me wonder whether A. P. Herbert did not miss his opportunity when he confined himself to only matrimonial cases. The heart-rending descriptions given by the hon. and learned Member would obviously provide the basis for many one-act plays.
The hon. and learned Member says that the man who makes a will is loved by those left behind but that the man who does not leave a will is loved by the next of kin and by the lawyers. It may be that the hon. and learned Member is right when he says that this is a matter of vast importance. It is of such imporance that it needs more consideration. What must be done is that all these proposals must be considered by the many professional bodies which would be interested. It is no good putting forward a Bill of this sort until the most careful consideration has been given to it, and not only by the various review bodies set up by the Lord Chancellor. We have seen already the amount of time required by those concerned with the Criminal Law Revision Committee's report. They are not satisfied with simply a few months. This will obviously need much longer.
In all the circumstances, it seems that much more research must be given to this matter. When it comes to the scale of priorities, it ought to be put back for at least some time until this consideration has been given.

Mr. Janner: Until we are all dead?

Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 13 (Motions for leave to bring


in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of Public Business), and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Greville Janner, Mr. Peter Archer, Mr. Blaker, Mr. Concannon, Mr. Clinton Davis, Mr. English, Mr. Knox, Mr. Lipton, Mr. McCrindle, Mr. Money, Mr. Tilney, and Dr. Summerskill.

WILLS

Bill to amend the law relating to the making, execution and attestation of wills: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Tuesday, 17th October and to be printed. [Bill 194.]

Orders of the Day — EMERGENCY POWERS

Message on behalf of Her Majesty [3rd August] considered:

Message again read:

The Emergency Powers Act, 1920, as amended by the Emergency Powers Act, 1964, having enacted that if it appears to Her Majesty that there have occurred or are about to occur events of such a nature as to be calculated, by interfering with the supply and distribution of food, water, fuel or light, or with the means of locomotion, to deprive the community, or any substantial portion of the community, of the essentials of life, Her Majesty may, by Proclamation, declare that a state of emergency exists; and the present stoppage of work among persons employed in the ports having, in Her Majesty's opinion, constituted a state of emergency within the meaning of the said Act of 1920 as so amended.

Her Majesty has deemed it proper, by Proclamation dated the 3rd day of August, 1972, and made in pursuance of the said Act of 1920, as so amended, to declare that a state of emergency exists.

7.37 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department, Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Robert Carr): I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, thanking Her Majesty for Her Most Gracious Message communicating to this House that Her Majesty deems it proper by Proclamation, made in pursuance of the Emergency Powers Act 1920, as amended by the Emergency Powers Act 1964, and dated 3rd August 1972, to declare that a state of emergency exists.
In opening the debate I propose to concern myself with the measures which the Government may have to take to deal with the emergency confronting the country. It is not my task to analyse the dispute which led to this national dock strike, a strike which, alas, has now lasted for two weeks. Only last week we had a full-day discussion on the industrial situation. I am confident that it will be the wish of all hon. Members that


nothing is said today on this serious situation which might prejudice a settlement of the dispute.
As the House will know, considerable efforts are being made to reach a negotiated settlement, and that is being done on the basis of the recommendations contained in the Jones-Aldington Report. I am sure that the whole House hopes that they will be successful. I believe that the House should be concerned today with the action the Government are taking to protect the whole community against the threat, which is an inevitable consequence of a national dock strike, to the essentials of life of the community as a whole.
I now propose to outline briefly to the House the purposes of the emergency regulations which came into force last Friday. Hon. Members may wish to raise details, and perhaps even legal points, on the regulations during the debate. My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General will be pleased to deal with them when he winds up.
As the House knows, the proclamation of a state of emergency was made on Thursday last, 3rd August. On the same day, the Emergency (No. 2) Regulations, 1972, were made. They were laid before Parliament and they came into operation the following day—that is, at the beginning of last Friday, 4th August.
Section 1 of the Emergency Powers Act, 1920, empowers Her Majesty to proclaim a state of emergency when something has occurred which constitutes a threat to the essentials of life of the community because it interferes with the supplies of food, water, fuel or light, or transport.
To declare a state of emergency and to take the emergency powers which go with it are serious actions. They ought not to be taken lightly. It is right that Parliament should always question such actions seriously and fully.
Equally, however, it must be recognised that any Government have an over-riding duty to protect the essentials of life of the whole community; and in a country as dependent as we are in the United Kingdom on imports of food and raw materials for our factories it has always been recognised that a national dock strike, perhaps more than any other sort of industrial dispute, quickly presents a threat to essential supplies which cannot be ignored.

Mr. Stanley Orme: The Secretary of State is talking about the threat to our lifeline, so to speak, and the need, as he sees it, to bring in the regulations. Does he intend to say anything tonight about how the need to introduce the regulations could be avoided by having a settlement of the dispute? Are we to have a report on the progress of the negotiations? I asked for this last week. It is essential that it is made to the House. I hope that the Secretary of State will deal with it.

Mr. Carr: As I made clear, I am dealing with the emergency regulations. This is my job. It is the traditional job of the Home Secretary on these occasions. I have already said that this matter was debated fully last week. A whole day was found for it specially at the request of the Opposition. Our promptness in finding time for that debate was welcomed by the Opposition. We all know the background. We have all debated the background.
We all know that this is being dealt with on the basis of the Jones-Aldington Committee, which I think was generally agreed to be the basis of the most hopeful line of settlement of this dispute, and which I believe was generally welcomed on both sides of the House. What has been happening today, of which I cannot be aware and this is why I cannot report, is that there has been a further meeting of the Jones-Aldington Committee. For all I know, as I have been in the House all afternoon, that may still be going on.
I can tell the House that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment will certainly make a statement to the House before we rise for the recess tomorrow, as we are to do, if resulting from the meeting today there is anything which we can usefully report to the House. My right hon. Friend certainly will not be backward in making a statement.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: Does the Secretary of State agree that the debate last week was not confined entirely to the dock strike but was on the general situation arising from the application of the Industrial Relations Act, including the immediate situation of the dock strike? Therefore, my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West


(Mr. Orme) is justified in saying that when debating emergency powers arising out of a dock strike we are entitled to hear the latest situation which has arisen in relation to that dispute.

Mr. Carr: Not necessarily, I think. Nor will the hon. Gentleman find that this has always been the case, if he will look back. As far as I know, there is nothing to prevent hon. Members from raising this issue; but that is a matter for you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and not for me. As Home Secretary it is my responsibility to bring in the emergency regulations and explain them to the House. That is the traditional responsibility of the Home Secretary—[Interruption.] If hon. Members opposite, instead of getting so steamed up, will look back and see what happened under the Labour Government, they will see that exactly the same thing happened: the then Home Secretary introduced the Motion and the Attorney-General of the day replied. In this case it is my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General who is to reply.
What we are doing is entirely in the tradition of the House and is how it should be done and how it was done by a Labour Government on the two occasions when they had to do this. Hon. Members are perfectly entitled to say that it should be done differently. What they are not entitled to say is that somehow or other this Government are doing matters differently from the way their Government did them when the Labour Government had to take similar measures.

Mr. John Mendelson: The right hon. Gentleman knows very well as Leader of the House that when he announced business for this week my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) immediately linked this debate with the request for a debate on the dock situation. Therefore, although I am not speaking in any spirit of hostility at this point in the debate, would it not be much better for the debate to be wound up by the Secretary of State for Employment so that the relevant part of the debate—the position in the docks—can be put before the debate concludes and the House is asked to vote, rather than that being stated tomorrow morning?

Mr. Carr: I do not think so. Nor have my predecessors in this or in other Governments thought so.
It would not be a bad thing—here I speak with some feeling as a former Secretary of State for Employment—if the House, particularly the Opposition, could revert to what used to be the tradition of the House, which was that when there was an industrial dispute actively going on the House tried not to speak about it or debate it in a way which was aggravating and controversial. I know full well the traditions of the House. I was Secretary of State for Employment two years ago when there was a dock strike—this was before the Industrial Relations Bill was introduced—and the strictures I am now making of the Opposition were well justified at that time as well. I believe that it would be for the good of the House and of the country if we could get back to what always used to be the position, whether it was under a Labour Government or under a Conservative Government: namely, that the responsible Minister's choice of the moment to come and make statements, and, equally, his choice of the moment when not to come and make statements to the House, was on the whole respected by both sides.
Nobody can accuse either my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment or myself when I was in his position of being shy of coming to the House. What we claim is the right, in view of the delicate situation of industrial disputes, to choose our moment to come to the House as responsibly as we can in relation to our overall duty, which is to try to bring the dispute to a solution.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment will come, and is eager to come, to the House as soon as he can. However, the Jones-Aldington Committee is sitting today. I do not know what time the Committee finished its deliberations today, because I have been in the House all afternoon. I do not know whether the Committee has yet reported to my right hon. Friend.

Mr. John D. Grant: Then telephone.

Mr. Carr: What a ridiculous thing to say, and this from an hon. Member who was once an industrial correspondent and who claims to know something about


these matters. That is ignorant troublemaking of which he should be ashamed, and that is all I have seen him indulge in since he became a Member of the House.

Mr. Grant: The right hon. Gentleman has told the House that he does not know what the situation is. I have merely suggested that if he lifted the telephone, which I should have thought was within the realm of possibility, he would have learned what the current situation was and would not now be standing at the Dispatch Box in ignorance.

Mr. Carr: It is the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Employment and not of the Home Secretary to do that. It is his duty to judge the situation of the moment. That is what has always happened. [Interruption.] From my 22 years' experience in the House and from all that I have read about matters before that time I have never known of an Opposition of either party who have sought to deny the responsible Minister the right to choose his moment to come and report to the House when requested by the House to do so. [Interruption.]

Mr. James A. Dunn: I intend to speak in this debate. The Secretary of State has impugned my intentions. I shall have to speak with realism about the situation in the docks, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will listen to me. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that during the one emergency which took place under the Government whom I supported the Government benches had their say about the emergency and their strictures were to the point. It is a national emergency, and I am sure he recognises that his remarks have not covered that situation.

Mr. Carr: I am not impugning the hon. Member. I hope he knows me well enough to know that I would not do that. But it is not responsible for the Opposition to expect me as Home Secretary on this occasion to report to the House about the intricacies of an industrial dispute when it is not my responsibility. That is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment, who will report at the first moment that he believes it is in the national interest so to do. That is what I am saying, and that is all I am saying. If I am getting angry with hon. Members

opposite, as I admit I have been—and it does not happen very often—it is because I genuinely believe that in the last two years they have not been respecting what has been the tradition. Traditionally the rôle of the Minister of Labour—the Secretary of State for Employment as he is now called—is a delicate and difficult one, and the House respects this and does not make a difficult situation worse than it need be, not just for the Government but for the whole country.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for allowing me to enter into the intervention debate that he is having with the Opposition. We on the Government side would wish to get the earliest possible settlement on the right terms. The fact remains that there is only the Jones-Aldington Committee, or a variant of it, with which to obtain a settlement. We are more concerned that the rest of the country should not be thoroughly upset by the situation in the docks, which is getting worse, and that other industries, particularly the farming industry should not be wrecked. We therefore want to know whether the Home Secretary intends to introduce whatever is necessary under the emergency regulations to ensure that the rest of the country does not suffer unduly.

Mr. Carr: I appreciate what my hon. Friend has said, and that is why I must stick to my responsibilities as Home Secretary to introduce the regulations. That is what happens traditionally in these cases. It would be totally wrong of me to be drawn into commenting on the dispute. Whatever I may have said in the heat of the moment about hon. Members of the Opposition, I shall try not to be roused again in that way. I intend not to be drawn by any method into expressing any view about the merits of the dispute. I shall seek only to do my proper job.

Mr. Kevin McNamara: rose—

Mr. Carr: I shall give way to the hon. Member and after that I must get on with my speech for the sake of the House.

Mr. McNamara: The right hon. Gentleman should remember that he is


also the Leader of the House. He has said that if there should be something to be said tomorrow the Secretary of State for Employment will say it. There is an important aspect in that tomorrow the House will rise for two months. We therefore feel it incumbent upon the Government to make a statement at least about the present situation before the House rises. That is why we were demanding it last week.

Mr. Carr: I take that point, and the Secretary of State for Employment is here now. It might help the House to know that I have been passed a note to say that the Jones-Aldington Committee is still sitting. I hope the House will give credit to my right hon. Friend and will trust him to exercise his duty in a responsible manner, and that is what I am asking it to do.
There is no immediate shortage of food but after 10 full days with the country's ports at a virtual standstill, while it may be true as yet that only a few imported fruits are in short supply in the shops, it is clear that were the strike to continue for any considerable period without any remedial action we should begin to experience increasing shortages of a much wider range of foods. Already my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is particularly concerned about the shortage of animal feeding stuffs, and this has obvious consequences for home food production at seocnd remove. Of course, we hope that the strike will end shortly, in which event things will quickly come back to normal, but we must at least provide for the worst to happen, on a contingency basis, and that is the background to the proclamation and the making of the regulations which are now before the House.
Subject to parliamentary approval, the regulations will continue in operation for as long as the state of emergency continues, and under Section 1 of the 1920 Act that means for a period of one calendar month from the date of proclamation. If, as we sincerely hope it will not, the emergency situation continued beyond that period, the state of emergency could be extended by a further proclamation and by the making of fresh

regulations, which would also, within seven days, have to be subject to the approval of Parliament. If that, unfortunately, were to become the state of affairs both Houses would have to be recalled for the purpose. Let us hope that that situation will not arise.

Mr. David Steel: I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman yet again but he seems to have passed the point where he was describing possible shortages. Will he say something about the position in the northern isles. My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) is there now, and the general picture that the Home Secretary has outlined for the country as a whole does not apply there, where the situation is extremely serious.

Mr. Carr: We are, of course, particularly concerned about the islands, not only the northern islands but the other islands around our coasts. In the past sometimes on occasions such as this the dockers have been prepared to take special action. [HON. MEMBERS: "They will this time."] I hope hon. Members will give me a chance to say so; if they were a little less excited perhaps we could get on better. I did not say that they were not prepared to take special action this time. I was going to add, if given half a chance, that they have been so prepared this time. I know that the Secretary of State for Scotland is in close touch with the local authorities. There was a special airlift of fuel oil yesterday and I know, quite apart from special approaches to dockers in various ports, that the need for further airlifts of true emergency supplies is being considered.

Mr. Norman Buchan: The Home Secretary said that on former occasions the dockers have been helpful. On this occasion the dockers in Glasgow and Aberdeen have been more than helpful, and the people on the islands have thanked them for their help. They have not been more successful because of the action of the Social Security Department. The Provost of Stornoway expressed his thanks to the dockers in this morning's papers and said that he hoped to meet them. The intervention of the Social Security Department has prevented them from doing what they wanted to do.

Mr. Carr: I wanted the hon. Member to intervene because I thought he might wish to raise that point. It is an important one and it is right to say something about it. We should be careful in using the expression "Social Security Department". The 1966 Act was introduced by the Labour Government. Hon. Members opposite know at least as well as I do that the Supplementary Benefits Commission is, as it was meant to be, an independent body. It does not bow to the wishes of this Secretary of State or any other Secretary of State. It operates the Act and the rules laid down under it, and that Act—I make no point about it, but it happens to be the fact—was passed by the Labour Government in 1966.
The Supplementary Benefits Commission, operating the 1966 Act, has taken a decision in relation to the dockers who expressed a wish to have the equivalent of what would have been their pay made over to a charity. The independent Commissioners have given their ruling. Under the procedure laid down by the 1966 Act, that ruling has been appealed against, and neither I nor my right hon. Friend may interfere in that independent appeal procedure. That is the situation. There is nothing that I or my right hon. Friend can do about it, because the Supplementary Benefits Commission is operating its rules in its own independent way.

Mr. Buchan: What about sending for the Official Solicitor?

Mr. Carr: It is all very well to say that, but if there is anything wrong in the Act or the rules, or in the Commission, its powers, membership and constitution, hon. Members opposite must take the blame for it. I do not believe that there is anything wrong, and I am not saying that there is, but I do say that it is not fair, if anyone is thinking of doing so, to make this a matter of party debate, since the matter stands as I have set it out. Whatever any of us may think about it, it is the decision of the Commission, and we must leave it to the appeal machinery.

Mr. Dunn: rose—

Mr. Robert C. Brown: rose—

Mr. Carr: I give way once more to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Kirkdale (Mr. Dunn), and then I must get on.

Mr. Dunn: The right hon. Gentleman has referred to paragraph 27 of Schedule 2 to the 1966 Act, which is affected also by certain provisions of the 1971 Act. This interpretation has been applied for the first time in the present docks situation. It has never been applied before. I have been dealing with the matter personally, and I know that on Merseyside the men who were involved are now receiving supplementary benefit, whereas in other parts of the country they are not. There is inconsistency here.

Mr. Carr: I know the situation which arose in Liverpool. I think that the Commission ruled that a mistake had been made in one case in paying benefit, but, since it had been made in one case, the fairest way was to make it in the other cases while at the same time restating the rule and emphasising what it was. I do not believe that the 1971 Act affects the situation here, but my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General has been listening to what has been said and he will give a categorical answer one way or the other on whether the position is in any way affected by the 1971 Act.
The regulations which have been laid before the House, as always on these occasions, have necessarily been drafted to cover a wide variety of situations, a far wider variety than I sincerely hope will have to be coped with in practice. I stress again that, in seeking these powers now, all we are doing is to ensure that they are available without delay should the need for their use arise.
I wish to make absolutely clear that there will be no use of these powers beyond what is necessary to ensure the essentials of life to the community. We believe that they must be there in a situation of national dock strike, but we shall not use them beyond what is genuinely essential to protect the life of the community. Similarly, it is the Government's firm intention the moment it is clear beyond reasonable doubt that the emergency powers are no longer necessary, to end the state of emergency and to end the regulations.
Little use has so far been made of the regulations in the few days they have been in force, although my right hon. Friend, under paragraph 4 of Regulation 3, has appointed port emergency committees in all the major ports. Initially,


they will report to him about the state of the ports, and later, if necessary, under his directions, they could take the action required to control traffic in those ports.
A total of 40 regulations is a formidable amount of subordinate legislation. Several of the regulations confer extensive powers upon Ministers to make further orders, to give directions or to issue general or special authorities. The House has had an opportunity to study the regulations since they were laid last Thursday. It will have been noted that they are substantially the same as those made last February on the occasion of the national coal strike, the only exception of substance being the addition of one new regulation to which I shall refer later.
I shall not take the time of the House in analysing each regulation in detail, but perhaps it will be convenient if I give a brief explanation of their purpose, taking them in various blocks. The first two regulations are concerned with the title, commencement and interpretation. We then come to Regulations Nos. 3 to 5 which relate to the control of ports and port employment. I have already referred to the appointment of port emergency committees under Regulation No. 3.
The next block of regulations, Nos. 6 to 15, relates to the power to relax certain existing restrictions applicable to road transport, if that should be necessary.
In the next block, Regulations Nos. 16 to 20 enable the relaxation of obligations and restrictions as to public services and facilities, including transport services, electricity and gas supply, water supply and resources, and sewerage and sewage disposal, obvious essentials of life in respect of which the Government might have to take action in an emergency.
Regulations Nos. 21 to 24 enable Ministers to regulate the supply and distribution of fuel, food and animal feeding stuffs and to control the prices of food and animal feeding stuffs. I know that considerable concern is felt, quite naturally, about the possibility of exorbitant price rises, and there are those who have urged the Government to make immediate use of this power. We shall listen carefully to the arguments which, no doubt, will be presented during the debate about the need to use this price

control power. We shall consider it, but we should be misleading the public if we were to suggest, or appear to suggest, that price control provides an easy way of protecting them against the hardships of a dock strike.
When supplies are cut short, only an elaborate administrative machinery backed by a system of rationing can make general price controls effective. The Government doubt, therefore, that in a short-term situation such as this—as we hope it will be—the necessary administrative machinery could be constructed to deal effectively with the price problem which may arise. It is noteworthy that so far, in previous states of emergency, successive Governments have not found it feasible to make price control effective. On the other hand, I assure the House that, if the crisis were, unfortunately, unduly prolonged, the Government would certainly examine the extent to which it would be right and might be helpful to use price control and other available powers to deal with the supply of essential foods.
I come now to Regulation No. 25, which is new. This is not a regulation which is likely to be used in the present emergency, even if others are. It is designed to facilitate rapid recourse to alternative sources of drugs and medicines where normal channels are impeded. In this country, we build up a corpus of regulations necessary to deal with an emergency, and experience in the last one indicated to us that this regulation should be added to the corpus so that in certain circumstances the procedures involved in the import of drugs and essential medicines could, if necessary, be short-circuited. However, as I say, it is hardly likely to be used in the present dispute, even if others have to be.
Power to waive the provisions of the Medicines Act is already held by the Secretary of State for Social Services in respect of most drugs and medicines, other than those used primarily for the treatment of animal diseases, in which case my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has the power to waive the relevant parts of the Act. But my two right hon. Friends could use those new powers for the emergency importing of drugs and medicines if the need should arise, although I do not think it is likely in this dispute.
Regulations 26–29 enable the appropriate Minister to control transport services, including road, rail, air and sea transport.
Regulations 30 and 31 give power to requisition chattels and to take possession of land.
Regulations 32–40 repeat the provisions of earlier regulations, mainly with regard to offences and penalties.
That is a brief account of the scope of the regulations. They are wide, as I believe they must, and should, be on an occasion like this, although I repeat that I hope that their use will not have to be widespread. Certainly, we shall not use any of them unless it is absolutely essential.
Finally, I stress that the regulations are not directed against the dockers or their union. Their purpose is not to break the strike. It is to protect the life of the community. They are not a means of bringing Government pressure to bear on the parties in the dispute. The Government are simply acting to discharge their duty to the nation as a whole to secure the maintenance of the essentials of life.
I believe that the House will therefore support the Government's actions. I am sure that I speak for the whole House in expressing the hope that there will be a speedy end to the dispute. Far from saying anything which might exacerbate feeling and in any way put back the prospect of a settlement, I hope that we can all join in a call, which I know will be echoed by the whole nation, to the parties involved to consider the overall public interest as well as their own genuine interests, to seek a quick settlement of the strike and thus put to an end the need for the powers.

8.12 p.m.

Mr. Reg Prentice: We do not intend to oppose the Motion, nor shall we want to try to go over the ground covered in last week's debate. But hon. Members on this side, and I hope hon. Members on both sides, will want to discuss the docks crisis to a far greater extent than the Secretary of State for the Home Department did when he opened the debate. We are bound to do so to some extent by reference to the general deterioration of industrial relations under the present Government. We

are bound to reflect that this is the fourth time in just over two years that it has been necessary for the Government to seek emergency powers and that this is a symptom of the deterioration of industrial relations. They are in a worse state than at any period in the post-war years, not only a worse state than under the Labour Government but a worse state than under Conservative Governments before 1964.
The fact that we must have this debate, that we must have a Motion in which the Government ask for the powers, is a symptom of the great difficulty into which their policies have plunged our country. I believe, as many of my hon. Friends said earlier when they interrupted the right hon. Gentleman, that we should have had an assessment of the docks strike situation. That could have been achieved by the Secretary of State for Employment speaking in the debate. Alternatively, the Home Secretary, as a senior Minister, could have been briefed on the situation and have given us an assessment of it as Ministers see it tonight.
Of course, the right hon. Gentleman is right to say that none of us would want to say a word tonight that would make a settlement more difficult, but it is possible to have an objective discussion of the situation without inflaming passions on either side of the argument, and that is what the House should be doing.
The right hon. Gentleman told us that he regrets the old days when industrial disputes were hardly ever discussed on the Floor of the House. I have two comments to make. First, he is the last person to lecture us on that, because he and his colleagues have made the subject much more partisan than it has ever been in the past. It is their legislation, their general policy of confrontation, that has turned industrial relations into a major subject of political dispute in a way that it has not been in the past. Secondly, I believe that the best habits and those that prevailed some years ago when the House was too inclined to say "We must never discuss an industrial dispute." These are matters of great importance to the nation and they should be discussed in the House. They can be discussed here without necessarily being discussed in a way that makes a solution more difficult.
We were told just now that the JonesAldington Committee is still meeting this


evening. One thing that can unite us all is that we all profoundly hope that the meeting will make substantial progress towards a settlement. We profoundly hope that it will be possible for the union leaders to recall the dock delegate conference very shortly, that they will have something positive and new to say to that dock delegate conference and that they will be able to make a recommendation that will be accepted by the delegates that there should be a return to work. If that is to happen, it will require constructive thinking on both sides of the argument, not merely a compromise but constructive thinking about the very difficult problems.
I do not think I am being in any sense partisan if I say that the immediate problem is more constructive thinking on the employers' side. When I speak of the employers' side I am not referring to Lord Aldington and his collagues on the committee. One of the difficulties of the situation is that they do not speak, and have never had the power to speak, for all the employers involved in the problems under discussion.
I want to refer here particularly to the second of the third main recommendation of the committee, the recommendation on container groupage work, on page 7 of the report. It says:
Accordingly unions, port authorities and employers should seek agreements with appropriate outside interests about container groupage work on the lines of agreements already made between, for instance, the unions and the port authorities and some Containerbase Companies, giving preference to the recruitment of registered dock workers.
I underline two points in particular. The report refers to that fact that already there have been agreements in many areas. Certainly in the Merseyside area there has been a number of agreements already for the employment of dock workers in groupage container work. I also want to emphasise—and I hope that this point is taken by Conservative Members and the employers concerned—that the key words here are
to the recruitment of registered dock workers.
The unions are not saying that when a large manufacturer packs his own containers in his own plant he must employ dockers to do it. They are saying that where there is a groupage centre where

several small loads are brought together so that the container is stuffed with various loads, work of that kind is essentially dock work and should be performed by registered dock workers.
That is something we have accepted almost automatically in every other industry. Where technological change leads to a reduction in the number of jobs, and perhaps to a different character of the work involved, we have normally assumed that the existing workers in the industry concerned have the first claim to do the new kind of work. We have assumed that when coal-cutting machinery is introduced into coal mines it will be operated by coal miners. We have assumed that if a factory goes over to automation so that the old type of work is changed, the existing workers will have first claim on the new types of job in the factory. This seems to me to be the essence of the argument affecting these container depots.
It is not sufficient for the employers to say, as some have been saying, "We will take on so many dockers if they will leave the register, take their severance pay and then work for us at wages lower than dock wages". The dockers are entitled to an assurance that they will work these depots as dockers, with all those conditions which have been agreed for dock work, in what is essentially a docker's job. This part of the report, which I agree is an excellent document, was necessarily more vague than other parts for the reason I have mentioned—that Lord Aldington and his colleagues cannot speak with the same degree of authority for the employers I am talking about as they can for the port authorities. Nevertheless this difficulty must be overcome, and it must be overcome by the employers themselves making the necessary statement in the next few days. If they do not make that statement, I believe that they will be betraying the nation and perhaps prolonging the docks strike, with the ruin of their own business. The responsibility is a heavy one but it must be faced squarely.
Clearly I would not say, and have never said, that the dockers do not also have a responsibility. If sufficient progress is made for the leaders of the Transport and General Workers Union to feel able to recall the docks conference and say "We have made progress but more has to be done", I hope that the delegates


would see fit to call off the strike, because there are large numbers of these firms, some very small, and the whole job of negotiating with all of them will not be done in a matter of days. After the success of the committee over the last week or two in getting a number of important employers to accept this formula, I hope that there can be a return to work, with further negotiations over the weeks and months ahead.
If the dock strike goes on much longer, the effects will be very serious to everyone involved. I believe that the country can afford a docks strike for the sort of period we have seen so far and perhaps a little longer, but very little longer. If the strike goes on for any length of time there will be very great hardship, as there always is, first of all for the dockers and their families. We should not forget this in any strike situation. The men and their families are the first victims because they are not getting paid.
Secondly there are the financial and possibly ruinous difficulties for port employers and other employers on the fringe. Thirdly there is great difficulty for the economy. The consumer protection which we have been reading about will not turn out very well if there is a docks strike of any length. Fourthly there is the effect as I am sure the dockers themselves are aware, on other workers, who may be laid off from their job if the strike is prolonged.
There is yet another effect which is too often neglected—the international effect. One reads of cargoes of grapes from Cyprus or of bananas from Jamaica and elsewhere. People in poor countries with very low standards of living could be affected by the prolongation of a strike of this kind. The world is becoming more and more inter-dependent. I am sure that we on this side can make an appeal to our fellow trade unionists to remember the demand for international solidarity among workers involved in a situation of this kind. If either the employers or the workers prolong the strike a day longer than necessary, they will not deserve any sympathy or support from anyone else in the country.
I turn now to the emergency powers. The content is very largely the same as on previous occasions but the right hon. Gentleman mentioned an additional point. Potentially these are very drastic powers—

they have to be because, that is the meaning of the word "emergency". They would not be emergency powers unless they were potentially drastic. It is absolutely vital that they be used as sparingly as possible. I was glad to hear what the right hon. Gentleman said on this aspect.
I was struck by a phrase used in a leader in The Times on Friday, which said that the Minister should use these powers
no sooner and no further than necessity requires.
I put to the House two clear reasons for this. The first is that the powers by their nature interfere with individual freedom in ways we all find repugnant, not merely in the sense that orders can be given to people to do things through the requisitioning of their property, or whatever it may be, but also because protection is removed from people. For example, there is the clause concerning drivers' hours, which is a very serious matter. There are other serious matters of this kind in which the normal statutory protections afforded to people do not have to apply if regulations are issued.
The second reason for the sparing use of the powers is relevant to the dispute itself. The right hon. Gentleman said that the purpose of the Government was not to strike-break. He said that the powers were being sought in order to protect vital supplies. Of course I accept that as being a sincere statement of the Government's view but, whether they like it or not, the use of these powers inevitably has a strike-breaking effect. It is a dilemma which we must face frankly.
The purpose of a dock strike is to interfere with supplies, and to do so not in order to attack the consumer but to attack the employers. But if the Government take any step to secure the passage of supplies for the sake of the consumer and the national economy or whatever it may be, inevitably they are to some extent taking pressure off the employers. It is a genuine dilemma which any Government have to face—I am not making a partisan point—in operating emergency powers in a strike in a vital industry. The use of emergency powers at all is in a sense something which can lessen the effectiveness of the strike weapon. Therefore, it is of vital importance that the words used by the


right hon. Gentleman should be honoured absolutely in the period ahead and that there should be a minimum use of the powers.
I particularly seek an assurance from the Solicitor-General on this additional point. The House should be assured that the Government have no intention, as they see the situation at the moment, of using troops. Just as the use of any powers would be provocative, the use of troops would be particularly so. That is a fact of the situation and we should have an assurance about it.
The right hon. Gentleman failed to tell us as much as he might have done about the state of essential supplies. He stated what the powers could do if used. He said that there was no general shortage of food at the moment although there was some anxiety about animal feeding stuffs. Perhaps we can have a more detailed statement about the main commodities about which there is anxiety, both as they affect the country as a whole and as they affect the remote areas, such as the Orkney and Shetland Islands, the Western Isles and other parts of the country where there is particular difficulty. What shortages do the Government think may arise, and how soon? How soon do they expect to have to operate some of the powers they are seeking? I realise that a lot of this will be guesswork and I realise that Ministers will be reluctant to guess in public when things may not work out in that way.
The Government are seeking from us tonight a considerable blank cheque. Emergency powers are always a blank cheque to some extent but emergency powers sought and obtained on the eve of a long parliamentary recess are particularly a blank cheque. We are therefore entitled to share in the Government's thinking on the contingencies that might arise particularly over the next week or two. The right hon. Gentleman said that the powers would need to be renewed—if the dock strike and the emergency continued. They will lapse automatically within a calendar month and if there were no renewal of the proclamation the Government would have to seek parliamentary powers in another seven days. If the worst comes to the worst we will be back here in four or five weeks' time for a similar debate.
I put this point to the Leader of the House. There could be circumstances—I sincerely hope there will not be—in which we on this side would be asking the Government for an earlier recall than that if the situation were seriously to deteriorate in the next week or two. If the use of emergency powers has been so extensive there could arise a situation in which it would be better that the House should reassemble for a debate on the situation possibly before the expiry of the calendar month. I hope that this will not happen but I am bound to put down that marker that we may have to demand the recall of Parliament if this situation arises.
I thought the right hon. Gentleman was more defeatist than he need be on the question of price control. He said the Government would certainly examine the possibilities of working along these lines. Of course the establishment of a bureaucratic structure to enforce price control in every detail, in every High Street in the land, is something that could not be operated but there might be a case for issuing regulations which could be enforced selectively. The very issuing of those regulations with some selective prosecutions if necessary could have a healthy effect on the situation, on what people on low incomes, pensioners and others, have to pay for their goods. I do not think that the difficulty about enforcement is necessarily the complete answer to what has been put forward by some of my hon. Friends.
To what extent will Ministers be in touch with the Transport and General Workers' Union about certain cargoes? The dockers have responded very well to certain situations in the last few days, supplies for the Northern and Western Isles, the school cruise ship in Liverpool and even the white rhinoceroses which had to be brought ashore in a hurry. Whether all those priorities are necessarily the most important I do not know. There might be other things which should have been done rather than looking after rhinoceroses. I only ask what communication exists between Ministers and the union, again to be used sparingly. In certain situations there might be suggestions which could be made.
If this is to work out constructively, the supplementary benefit position must be properly resolved. The right hon.


Gentleman said that the commission and the appeal tribunal are independent authorities and that Ministers cannot give them directives. This may be so but at the same time they are public authorities and we in this House can comment on the effects of their decisions and we are bound to comment on what has been happening.

Mr. Orme: On this vexatious question, my right hon. Friend says that the Minister claims that he is not responsible. If that is the case why did the Under-Secretary at the Department defend this decision on television last night and aggravate the situation? The telephone calls that I have had from my dockers today show that they believe the Government have deliberately interfered in this.

Mr. Prentice: This is a valid point. Ministers must recognise that people will feel that the Government have interfered. The Under-Secretary was right to go on television, because Ministers are bound to be involved, whatever the legality of the decision-making process. Ministers have to try to see that supplies reach Orkney and Shetland, for example, and that dockers who volunteer for this work are able to do so without their families losing supplementary benefit. This is so much in the public interest that some way must be found of coping with it. If necessary we should be asked to sit for an extra day to amend the necessary Act because this is vitally important.
Of course the dockers will not take their wages and spend them because this would be unacceptable when they are on strike and their fellow-workers are not earning wages. Equally they are entitled to say "We do not see why the employer should get away with it, why we should do this work without the employer meeting the cost." Some way out of this dilemma must be found.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Kirkdale (Mr. Dunn) has been very active in this matter and has, I understand, done a good deal to achieve a temporary solution of the problem on Merseyside which may be applicable elsewhere. I hope that he will enlarge on these points if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. In a matter as serious as this, Ministers cannot suggest that they are not bound to try to find an answer to the dilemma.
I conclude as I began. We shall not oppose the Motion but we are deeply disturbed at the sad state of industrial relations which has led to the present situation. Many of us were encouraged to read during the last few days of the talks between the Government and the CBI and the TUC, and we hope that they will lead to constructive results. However, the whole prospect can be destroyed by the industrial relations situation which is directly traceable to the confrontation policy of the Government and the Industrial Relations Act. Unless the Government are prepared to recognise frankly the part which the Act has played, including the history of the docks crisis in the last few weeks, they are in for worse trouble in the period ahead. Unless they recognise urgently the need to repeal, suspend or drastically amend the Act quickly, they will be in for even worse trouble, which all of us would wish to avoid.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Before I call the next speaker, it will perhaps be for the convenience of the House if I give a short explanation about the way in which the debate should go.
The debate on this Motion must be concluded at 10 o'clock. Then there will have to be decided the business Motion relating to later orders. When that is decided, the Leader of the House will move the second Motion and then this debate will continue as though nothing had happened. The debate on the second Motion can run until 11.30.
I thought that hon. Members who might, as we got nearer to 10 o'clock, have thought that they were being crowded out would like to know that they need not feel that anxiety.

8.38 p.m.

Mr. John Biffen: Although there were elements in the speech of the right hon. Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice) with which I could not wholly agree, I think that even his most astringent critic could not claim that he sought to raise the temperature of the House in addressing himself to what is undoubtedly an immensely serious subject. It probably would be to the advantage of this institution if we proceeded in the tone and spirit which the


right hon. Gentleman set. He fairly pointed some of the dilemmas which confront us on these occasions. He talked about the dilemma that powers of this nature could be construed only as being in some sense strike-breaking, or, at the very least, strike-blunting. That is undoubtedly true and we should be foolish to suggest otherwise.
On the other hand, those of us representing constituencies which do not have a direct involvement in the dispute have a responsibility to offer some kind of protection, some kind of safety valve, for large numbers of people who feel that in disputes of this kind they are converted into frustrated and helpless witnesses and, indeed, victims.
The measures that we are being asked to confirm are seen by many members of the public as conferring upon them minimum forms of protection which they have a right to expect from the House. One of the dilemmas we have to solve is how we discharge that responsibility without inflaming the situation in the docks.
It is to that aspect of this many-sided problem that I want to devote my remarks. They derive unashamedly from a major constituency interest. As has been said by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the right hon. Member for East Ham, North, there is already growing disquiet about the shortage of animal feed which may have serious consequences for major sectors of British agriculture. One such sector is heavily represented in North Shropshire.
I will not expose hon. Members to a travelogue of my constituency, but within a 20-mile radius of one small central township, Wem, over a million birds are kept in modest sized poultry units. The area is not dominated by the Eastwood the Ross groups, but it is an area where a great deal of agriculture is devoted to pig and poultry production. One need have only a nodding acquaintance with this evening's final edition of the Evening Standard to realise that the problem has reached serious proportions, which were not indicated by the somewhat bland treatment of the topic by the BBC this morning. I will quote what Mr. Arthur Hawkey has written in a front page article in the Evening Standard:

The Prime Minister feels that the Government must not interfere in the purely industrial problem which is considered best left to both sides of industry to solve. For this reason the animal feed situation is not seen as serious enough to warrant the use of troops with its possible provocative effect on dockers on what may be the eve of renewed consideration of their position.
I understand those sentiments. I do not know whether they truthfully reflect the situation, but "the use of troops" is one of the more emotive phrases.
I want to look at Section 2(4) of the Emergency Powers Act, which might possibly be used to alleviate the developing dangerous situation for many pig and poultry producers, and to ask whether it is necessary to import the whole evocative phraseology and significance of the use of troops in taking certain measures under the Emergency Powers Act which I think could be productive.

Mr. James Hill: I wish to underline my hon. Friend's argument about the serious position of poultry farmers. My hon. Friend mentioned Ross Poultry Limited. That firm has said that in the Andover area next week it is preparing to kill and bury several million broilers.

Mr. Biffen: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It certainly underlines my argument and I am sure that if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, he will be able to demonstrate my argument, which, although a constituency argument, is not a parochial one.
There are three problems I can immediately think of which should properly detain the consideration of my right hon. Friend in the exercise of these measures. First there is the question of the seeming uneven distribution of the existing supplies of imported proteins. I do not know to what extent my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture has consulted major importers and compounders to see whether a scheme can be worked out whereby existing supplies can be distributed with a rough and ready measure of equity, because we live in a rough and ready situation. The decision is particularly serious for home mixers who have been exposed to difficulty; and the situation will became even more difficult for them if the strike continues even for another 24 or 48 hours.
I wonder whether in the distribution and allocation of supplies already available my right hon. Friend has been able to work out any system which will give some degree of hope to home mixers. I am informed that many of these people are within two or three days of having to take very severe measures indeed—measures which will practically wipe out large slices of a business which has been built up over many years.
My second point is to ask my right hon. Friend in the exercise of his powers under Regulation 24 of the emergency regulations what consideration he has given to the supplies of imported proteins which have been landed but are on the quayside and, therefore, rendered strike-bound although not still in the ships. I suppose these supplies could be brought into general distributions without the use of troops.
What is the level of supplies of imported proteins which are now at the quayside? I sought to establish this figure to the best of my ability by telephoning around this morning and was told by a reliable source that about 10,000 tons of soya bean meal and 40,000 tons of other protein are lying on the quaysides. If those supplies could be introduced into the general distributive system for pig and poultry farmers, this would give a measure of alleviation to the present situation.
Thirdly, when the strike is concluded—and there is general unanimity of opinion in the House that the sooner the strike is concluded the better—how long does my right hon. Friend think it will be before a fully effective distributive service is operating in respect of animal feed? The lateness of the home harvest, even allowing for all the disadvantages of using freshly harvested barley, makes the difficulties particularly intractable. In the strike which occurred at this time of the year two years ago, nothing like the same stringent considerations seemed to concern the House.
I believe that the points I have sought to emphasise are fair ones. The exercise of powers under Regulation 24 in the way I have indicated would not necessarily inflame the situation in dockland. Any hon. Member who takes part in this debate and advocates the use of powers under the regulations does so under a fairly heavy responsibility since the consequences

in a variety of directions have to be assessed. Once my right hon. Friends bring in emergency powers they raise a sense of expectation. There can be no doubt that they raise a sense of expectation amongst those whose livelihoods are prejudiced by the continuation of a strike in which they feel that they have no part at all, and as long as there is allowed to fester the resentment of the community in general against dock workers in particular that will not provide the backcloth for underlying and desirable social cohesion.
There is therefore a case for the use of these powers quite constructively, not in the sense of strike-breaking but in the guaranteeing of minimum services, and I can assure the House that what I have outlined is the very minimum that my enraged constituents would wish to see operated. They would want to put it in far more direct terms than I have.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. James Prior): I do not want to interrupt the debate at this stage but I should like to try to answer very briefly, for the benefit of the House, my hon. Friend's three points. We have asked the feedingstuffs merchants, compounders and importers, together with the National Farmers' Union, to do their best themselves to institute a system of rationing, which I think is the most effective way of operating at the moment. I understand that they are in very close contact and that they have so far been able to eke out supplies so that no chickens, pigs or other animals have had to be slaughtered. As far as I can tell, although it is always very difficult to get to the bottom of these things, there is no problem over the next two or three days at any rate. I am in daily touch with these people. I am seeing them all tomorrow night and I hope by then to have more specific news on the subject.
The position about supplies on the quayside is that we have asked Mr. Jones and he has asked dockers at each individual port to release supplies on the quayside where it can be shown that there is an urgent and critical need for them, and we are awaiting results. So far that situation does not appear to have existed, but it shortly will. I cannot give the actual level of supplies on the quayside, but there are very considerable supplies


of protein and high energy cereals held up on the quayside in silos or in stores. But these could be lifted very quickly.
As to how long it will take to get back to normal, my hon. Friend will know that this again is difficult to judge accurately, but I think that certainly within a week we could be back to the full throughput of feeding supplies.

Mr. Biffen: I am delighted to have my peroration marred, indeed destroyed, by so helpful an intervention by my right hon. Friend. I will therefore conclude by saying that I am certain that the farming Press and the journalistic services of the agricultural correspondents of radio and television will take very special note of what my right hon. Friend has just said. I hope that in the representations now taking place about voluntary rationing the perfectly legitimate interests of the home mixer will be protected. My right hon. Friend will appreciate that there is to some extent a conflict of interest between National compounders and those very large elements of the agricultural population who, quite legitimately, have developed home mixing as their technique of farming.
I had intended to conclude by saying that the House will confer upon my right hon. Friend very considerable powers and that we will expect those powers to be exercised with tact undoubtedly but that at the end we shall certainly expect those powers to be exercised with decision, because that is exactly what the circumstances require.

8.55 p.m.

Mr. Maurice Edelman: I share the hope which has been expressed that the Jones-Aldington Committtee will be able to produce a fair solution in the interests of all as quickly as possible. We are in the midst of a national crisis which affects Coventry, the most inland of cities, as much as it does the Outer Hebrides. I want to address myself to the nature of the crisis and the quality of the emergency powers which the Government now seek.
A foreigner observing our debate might think that it is a striking example of British flair. Here we are, in the midst of a crisis of the greatest magnitude, debating these grave matters in a thinly

attended House in the euphoria of a holiday which is about to begin. We are debating the matter in the almost total absence of the Press. We are discussing these grave issues as if they are merely one part of a general ragbag of end-of-term measures which have to be tidied up before we leave for the vacation.
I say that as no reproach to those hon. Members who are present. The fact of their presence shows their concern in the matter. Nor do I necessarily say it as any kind of reproach to those hon. Members who are absent. But here we are confronting one of the gravest issues of our time. The situation is deteriorating day by day not specifically in relation to the docks but as an aspect of the general decline in the industrial climate. I regret very much that this important subject is being debated in such a thinly attended House.
The emergency regulations themselves are of an importance which only those who have read them with care can appreciate fully. They restrict freedom of speech. In effect, they restrict the right to picket. They attribute to the Government powers of arbitrary arrest. Regulation 2(3) is of the utmost importance to our liberties. It reads:
Any reference in these Regulations to the doing of any act shall, unless the context otherwise requires, be construed as including a reference to the making of any statement.
I draw that to the attention of my right hon. and hon. Friends. These emergency powers are not concerned merely with actions which may involve penalties. They are concerned with statements by anyone who may be thought to have it in mind to engage in any action which will attract penalties.
This is a very grave and serious matter, and I go on by quoting one or two others of the regulations which are brought before this House. Regulation 33(3) reads:
No person loitering in the vicinity of any premises used or appropriated for the purposes of essential services shall continue to loiter in that vicinity after being requested by the appropriate person to leave it.
There follows a description of "the appropriate person".
What does that mean in terms of the traditional right to picket which the right hon. Gentleman defended specifically? It means that anyone who is regarded as


loitering for any purpose whatever, including picketing, may be arrested and subject to the penalties provided for in the regulations.
I quote a third example of the enormous and draconian powers which the Government are acquiring by means of these regulations which are going through "on the nod" tonight. Regulation 36 reads:
Where a constable, with reasonable cause, suspects that an offence against any of these Regulations has been committed, he may arrest without warrant anyone whom he, with reasonable cause, suspects to be guilty of the offence.
These are enormous powers which have not been required by anyone in our history since Oliver Cromwell. While it is true that under a benevolent Labour Government the use of these powers in reserve might be condoned or tolerated, I certainly should not willingly entrust them to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite. Indeed, I should sooner entrust a delinquent child with a loaded gun than these emergency regulations to the Government.
Despite the glib statement by the right hon. Gentleman that these powers are held in reserve and are not likely to be used, I ask him to consider the present mood of the public, to which his hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) referred. The hon. Gentleman quoted from the Evening Standard. Perhaps I may do the same. The lead letter in the Evening Standard this evening, written by a lady whose name I will not give because I do not believe she deserves advertisement, says:
Isn't it time somebody called their bluff"—
she was referring to the dockers—
and released us from their tyranny? We've got a State of Emergency.
She was anticipating the debate tonight.
Why not use it now and give them"—
the dockers—
24 hours to unload these ships, or else!
That is the mood which has been generated by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite; that is the context in which we are discussing these emergency regulations; that is the deteriorating climate in which the Government will acquire these enormous powers.
In cerain situations, in the interests of the nation as a whole, there may be

critical moments when the Government require certain of the powers included in these regulations. However, the Government must consider whether the application of any of those powers, in the context of the attitude which has been created among trade unionists generally, will lead to an even worse situation.
One of my hon. Friends earlier spoke about good and bad laws. Certainly when we talk about good or bad laws we are applying valued judgments which none of us would tend to apply when it came to observing or rejecting the law. However, there are moments when a certain section of the public feels so disadvantaged and unjustly done by that it is hard for those people to refrain from acting in a way which we might deplore in terms of the law but can understand when it comes to their particular and human rights.
Although the Government may acquire the right of repression by these emergency laws, unless they seek to tackle the underlying and fundamental reason for the problem we face at the docks, which finds its echoes among trade unionists throughout the country, then indeed they will find that, even if the dock strike is settled, there will be further repercussions, further strikes, and further occasions for them to introduce emergency regulations in what I have already described as the deteriorating industrial situation in this country.
When this Government came to power the rigid idealogical principle introduced by the Prime Minister was that of confrontation. That theory of confrontation has lain at the roots of every major strike in this country since those days, including the docks strike today. The doctrine of confrontation was that the workers and the trade unionists must be taken on. That attitude has percolated downwards so that, although the Government have now had a certain change of heart, throughout industry there are managements which remain attached to the idea that somehow or other they can deal with the trade unions only by using a mailed fist.
We have been concentrating on the strike at the docks, but I think we ought to take note that all over the country many strikes are taking place. Some of them have been going on for much


longer than the docks strike. They are strikes with great social and economic consequences, such as the one at the Jaguar works at Coventry where the men have been on strike for six weeks. The men there have been vilified on the ground that, somehow or other, they have prevented a major British product from being manufactured and sold. I must say in parenthesis that I regard it as extraordinary when workers are vilified for withholding their labour on products which they themselves have made when they are fundamentally the people who are responsible for creating a first-class car like the Jaguar. These men have been out on strike, not because they have been bloody-minded, as some papers have suggested, nor simply for the sake of striking. They are out on strike because they have definite grievances which they have presented and which have been rejected by management.
The Prime Minister has now rightly indicated that he wants to have tripartite discussions between the Government, the trade unions and management. That is a proper method of proceeding which he should have undertaken two years ago. I believe that it is right to have that colloquy between the interests involved to try to obtain some kind of harmony between all those concerned. Unfortunately, the new attitude has not yet reached those ranks of management where it is most applicable and where it could be used; for example, in the Jaguar strike.
While believing that, on the whole, Members of Parliament should not seek to intervene in industrial disputes, I have in the past, and, perhaps I can say, with some success, tried to bring together the parties concerned in the dispute. I must record tonight that Lord Stokes not only did not discuss the matter with me, despite my application to him to discuss it, but he asked some intermediary to talk to me. The fact is that instead of taking the opportunity of harmonising those who were in conflict he has allowed this ruinous strike to continue.
I make mention of that because I believe that there are structural problems in Britain today which, even when this docks strike is ended, will produce almost identical results. One has only to look at the machine tool industry, where,

because of the apprehension that the same problems as the docks now have with containerisation might recur in some way, there has been a reluctance on the part of the industry to invest. The result is that a firm like Herbert-Ingersoll, making one of the most advanced ranges of machine tools in the world, is going into the hands of a receiver, simply because management has been unable to make the necessary investment because of the belief that if it were to do so it would have redundancy problems which could not be settled. One of the most advanced firms in the world is falling into the hands of a receiver, and the economy as a whole, instead of benefiting from this advanced technology, has been forced to lag behind while our German, Italian and French competitors have been able to go ahead.
The problem of containerisation is, in a sense, a metaphor of all the problems of industry in the second industrial revolution. It is an illustration of the way in which, unless there can be some harmonisation of the interests of the trade unions, the employers and Government, the crisis we are facing tonight will recur and recur.
It is no use for either side to turn to violence. We have seen how people have sought to defy the law, somehow in the hope that by their physical rejection of it they may achieve their aim. We all know that the physical rejection of law is not merely an act of violence but a form of revolution. Once one enters into that phase of revolution, one gets counter-revolution. Once one enters the phase of violence, there is counter-violence. Once one enters the phase of anarchy, one gets Fascism. All these things we have avoided throughout our history by means of a consensus, that consensus which hon. Members on both sides of the House have been talking about and without which it is impossible for Britain to survive.
We are now living through a most critical time. The infection of violence spreads very rapidly, and the infection of strong measures tends to produce counter-measures.

Mr. Sidney Bidwell: How does my hon. Friend justify his remark that defiance of law, by itself, is a form of violence? If it is a passive defiance of law, where does the violence come from?

Mr. Edelman: If my hon. Friend had been present when I opened my remarks—

Mr. Bidwell: I was present.

Mr. Edelman: In that case, perhaps my hon. Friend will read what I have said. He will then be able to absorb what I have tried to say.
Simply philosophically, and rightly or wrongly, once the law is rejected one has in effect a condition of revolution. I do not say that all revolutions are wrong. On the contrary, I can well imagine cases, as in Hitler's Germany, in which revolution would have been well justified. But in a parliamentary democracy such as ours, we should seek to achieve a maximum consensus so that all interests of the country can live in harmony and work together for a common aim. That is what I believe in and what I want to see.
This is a critical debate. An emergency powers order should not go through on the nod. I could have wished that many more hon. Members had been present to participate in the debate and affirm their concern.
I urge the Government to try to re-establish the consensus of the nation, and not to use the tyranny of an ideological minority to try to crush their fellow citizens. I am speaking now of the Industrial Relations Act, which should never have been introduced. The obduracy of the Prime Minister is certainly the expression of a blinkered mind. Let him return to Parliament in October, or even before, with a firm decision to repeal the Industrial Relations Act, perhaps to find a new formula based on consent. That would be the first step to stopping a civil war of the spirit which has already broken out in England.

9.13 p.m.

Mr. John Stokes: I represent a town in the middle of the country, far removed from the docks but inhabited by ordinary people of this country. It is those people I wish to represent in my short speech. No hon. Member can be pleased that we are once again having to discuss emergency regulations in a national crisis. I shall try to make as constructive a speech as I possibly can, having been in industry or closely associated with it since the war

and believing, as I do, that the ordinary working man—that includes the docker in England today—is normally a perfectly sound, decent and patriotic citizen.
I certainly do not believe that the class war any longer exists in Britain. But I fear that at present some men are being misled and that they do not understand the Government's policy.
Most people understand the problems and difficulties of the docks and the dock workers and have much sympathy with the dockers' fears and worries about the future. Surely it is not beyond the wit of the Government, the employers and the unions to overcome this important but, in terms of numbers, fairly small problem. That is what the Jones-Aldington Report can do. We all know that the problem is one primarily of technological change and that the dockers would be beating their heads against a wall unless they realised that the old-style docker and old-style dock work have gone for ever. That is why I believe that every consideration must be given to the dockers.
I believe that the Jones-Aldington Report is generous. I also believe—I speak now for many people in the centre of the country away from the ports—that the dockers must not presume too much on the public sympathy, must not threaten too much whole industries such as we heard about in a most moving speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) and must not try to force whole industries into ruin. Looked at from that point of view this strike is absurd, as the hon. Member for Coventry North (Mr. Edelman) said. I have recently come from Luxembourg which has not had a strike for 25 years and whose people cannot understand what is happening here.
One element which worries me is subversion. We all know that it exists and is increasing. It is something for which the Government, as the trustees for the nation, have responsibility and something about which every good trade unionist should worry greatly. We know that there are a number of men occupying leading positions, or sometimes occupying positions behind the leading figures, whose interests are not the same as those of the vast bulk of the people. I only wish that the Government could act in a dawn


swoop, arrest them all, shut them up and put them away out of trouble, but I know that is difficult. [Laughter.] Hon. Members laugh, but they have not seen the "tape" which I have just been handed.
There is, unfortunately, in this peace-loving country a sustained growth of violence. I have just heard that in a small port in Lincolnshire seven policemen have been injured by pickets and a number of arrests have had to be made. This cannot be peaceful picketing. It is deplorable in what is, I understand, an official strike. I hope that we shall hear from hon. Members on the Opposition side a condemnation of this sort of violence, which does immense harm to the nation. I saw it recently in the notorious Saltley coke depot disturbances during the miners' strike. The country will expect to hear from the Government that the emergency powers will permit steps to be taken to stop illegal picketing and to stop the use of force in these confrontations.
Having spoken, perhaps painfully, on the issues of extremism, subversion and violence, I now turn to the unity of the nation in these troubles. I believe in the decency of the ordinary, law-abiding working man and I believe that the country wants him to have the best possible deal in a society which we hope will grow more prosperous. I believe that most working men want regular work and wish to give their wives and families a higher standard of living. That is a most laudable ambition and something which the Conservative Party supports.
In times of danger and inflation and when there is a docks strike the people look to the Government and to us for a lead, for who but the Government can protect the weak either against speculators and profiteers or against the bullying pickets? I believe that the Government must get closer to the ordinary people to tell them the facts in simple terms and to tell us all in this emergency, and in rather more detail than they have done so far, where our duty lies.
The country is crying out for leadership, not only from the Government but from every walk of life, including industry and the trade unions. It is because I believe that we are still a great nation

and that the vast majority of our people are as sound as ever they were that I believe, given proper leadership, there is nothing we cannot do. I believe this also applies to industry where there is a great responsibility on the owners, the managers and the employers. Sometimes the cult of the professional manager and the whiz kid, and the emergence of the technocrat in industry, has overlaid vastly more important human qualities of leadership, example and compassion.
At the weekend, when I was thinking over these problems and the state of the country, I read some words written by Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, to this House in 1660 when Parliament met again after all the troubles and turmoil of the civil war. The Government of the day wished to exercise great vengeance against those who had opposed the King-Clarendon said:
The King is a suitor to you … that you will join with him in restoring the whole nation to its primitive temper and integrity, its old good manners, its old good humour, and its old good nature; good nature, a virtue so peculiar to you … that it can be translated into no other language and hardly practised by any other people.
I believe we will all do well to remember those words in this important debate.

9.23 p.m.

Mr. James A. Dunn: May I good naturedly say to the hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Stokes) that he shows a lack of knowledge about the docks, the dock worker and port installations in general. I will not follow the line he has introduced, but I hope that the Government will not listen to some of the advice he gave when he indicated that the dock area was full of subversion. This is totally untrue.
On the dock estate there are many people who cover many facets of our life and take in many varying views, but they are British and they are workpeople and they are not what the hon. Member suggests. I take objection because I have an interest to declare. I am one of them—or I was before I came to the House—and I know most of them. I do not agree with all of them, and they do not agree with me, but they would never impute motives to me which they themselves would not accept.

Mr. Stokes: The hon. Gentleman must have misunderstood the whole purport of my speech. I did not suggest that the dock workers individually were bad people. I said the contrary, but I pointed out that they were, unfortunately, sometimes misled and I pointed out that there is subversion.

Mr. Dunn: I had better not follow that line. I shall stay with the Home Secretary and the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) who gave the House some advice. It is my purpose to tell the House what is happening in the docks, starting with Merseyside.
There is hostility now building up to a degree which is causing anxiety to those of us who know the docks industry. What has happened over the voluntary working of ships and the movement of essential cargoes in relation to the response of the Supplementary Benefits Commission and its use of paragraph 27 of Schedule 2 to the 1966 Act? The commission's decision is stopping the dock worker from performing the service which he has always willingly given. If the hon. Member for Oswestry is right when he says that within three or four days there will be the danger of shortage of animal feeding stuffs—the Minister seemed to indicate that that was right and that there would be anxiety in two or three days—one can only say that the Government are allowing matters to develop in such a way as to aggravate the situation unnecessarily.
The denial of supplementary benefit to the dependants of the docker in the circumstances which prevailed on Merseyside, Glasgow and Aberdeen is absolutely ridiculous. This is the first time it has happened. I remind the House of the terms of paragraph 27:
If a person has deprived himself of any resources for the purpose of securing benefit or increasing the amount thereof those resources may be taken into account as if they were still his".
The words are that they "may be" taken into account. The Supplementary Benefits Commission is now saying that they shall be taken into account. Indeed, it is now going even further and warning those involved in this industrial dispute that the procedure under the 1971 Act for the recovery of benefits will be used to the last degree.
The Government should consider carefully what they are doing in relation to the state of affairs now precipitated by the unwarranted action and interpretation of the law by those who apply the supplementary benefit rules. The caution or reluctance which the Government have felt in bringing emergency powers into operation to move products from the dockside or from ships will have to go if certain things happen, and they will have to bring in troops. If they are compelled to do that, what will happen?
Merseyside is quite close to another island in which there is turmoil and disturbance. Up to now, thank God, there have been no significant consequential effects in my area and the districts surrounding Merseyside, but if the troops come in there will be real difficulty. It will not be just a matter of the emergency movement of essential foodstuffs and supplies. Things will take on a much broader base involving other industries on Merseyside. I warn the Government—the Solicitor-General knows what happens on Merseyside—that there is a loyalty to dock workers and an awareness and appreciation of the indignities imposed upon them in yesteryear such that my community, my people, are not prepared to see them beaten into the ground.
For the first time, what the dock worker is fighting for is the right to work. He is not asking for more money. He is telling the Government and the community at large "We have been reduced in total numbers from 80,000 to about 40,000, and our future is still bleak." We can go back over all the reports—nicely printed reports with recommendations that were carefully discussed and acknowledged. There were the Bristow Report, Devlin stage I, interim Devlin and Devlin stage II. At the end of the day the dock workers were going out of the gate in large numbers, with no prospects of future employment.
The docker is fighting for the right to work for his family. In doing so he will fight the Supplementary Benefits Commission and the Conservative Government if they dare to apply the full provisions of the 1971 Act. If in the 15 days after the return to work notices are issued for attachment of wages through the employer, there will be further problems.
I want the strike over. I wish to God it would end tomorrow because many people, many of my friends are suffering deprivation because of it. [Interruption.]—The hon. Gentleman shows a lack of knowledge. If the Home Secretary uses the emergency powers unwisely, if he brings troops into Merseyside, if he does not deal with the situation that has arisen because of the clarification by the commission about the problems of voluntary working, there will be trouble.
I should like to offer one solution which has been accepted on Merseyside. I got in touch with the chairman of the Port Emergency Committee, who is also general manager of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company. When I explained to him what had happened to the dockers, he was horrified. I said that there was an obligation of honour upon the employers that they should receive no advantage either way if the work was done. It is up to the employers to volunteer to make a donation to a charity nominated by the dockers, and then the dockers will volunteer to work and there will be no question of wages. The Liverpool employers accepted that immediately and say that they will implement it. The chairman of the Port Emergency Committee was grateful for the common sense with which the suggestion was made. The Government should get cracking in a similar way in Aberdeen, Glasgow and every other port.
It might be sensible to start talking about a national code for all docks when they are involved in an industrial dispute, one that can be implemented nationally, with the help of a representative of the Transport and General Workers' Union—not necessarily Jack Jones when he is busy with other things. But for goodness' sake let us co-ordinate the services of Government. Do not let one arm be asking for caution and compassion and the other dealing with conflict and confrontation. That is what has been happening.
If the Government want the dock worker to go back, they must time what they tell him. He must not be told all the bad news. That is what has been happening. There is some good news. The Jones-Aldington Report can be used as the basis of agreement if the port employers' interests in container

inland ports are established. "Inland ports" was the language of 1966, but now they become container bases. If the Government really want a solution, they must get to the people who have investments in land close to dock estates, investments in the cities served by docks. They must make an agreement that within a certain radius any container work will be that of the registered dock worker. The dock worker will never ask for the work that is coming direct from the manufacturer. He has never done so. But he would be a fool if he sat down in the present situation and let container bases flower outside the dock and take the bread from his own mouth and that of his children. That has been happening. There has been evidence of it recently, published in a Sunday newspaper. There is much more evidence. There are many more allegations yet to be proved.
If the Supplementary Benefits Commission continues on the path which it has started, incurring so much hostility, there will be no end to the dispute. At the same time, I tender my apologies to the Home Secretary. I had intended to speak to him personally but when I got here I found him encamped on the Front Bench. I had also intended to speak to other people. I gave notice to the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, because he went on the "World at One" and quite rightly said that the dockers must voluntarily work without wages. But he forgot to add that there was also an obligation of honour upon those for whom the work was being done, just as that obligation obtained on previous occasions.
This is the first time these social security regulations have been interpreted with such rigidity, and it should not have happened. It is not a question of whether the Commission has a right to do it. Try to explain that to the Liverpool dockers and they will laugh one out of court.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Geoffrey Howe): I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for interrupting, but I do so to establish more clearly one fact underlying what he is saying. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) referred to this same pattern of work during the docks dispute of 1970 in a debate at that time. I understand that


the practice of dockers working essential cargoes for no pay other than that paid by the employers through them to charity has a precedent, and a respectable precedent. What I am not quite clear about is whether the hon. Gentleman is saying that in these circumstances on previous occasions a claim has been made by the dockers on the Supplementary Benefits Commission of the kind now in question and has been met, or whether he is saying that it is only on this occasion, perhaps because the strike has gone on for rather longer, that such a claim has been made, with the answer of which he has complained—and I do not use the word pejoratively. Does this represent a change of decision and position on the part of the Supplementary Benefits Commission as compared with past experience?

Mr. Dunn: I am trying to be helpful. This is a new interpretation of an old practice whereby wages which would normally have been earned have been donated to charity. Supplementary benefit has always been available on previous occasions to the families of the dockers who did this. This is the first time that it has not happened. On previous occasions, everyone has always been so pleased that essential cargoes were being moved that the dockers were never asked these questions.

Mr. J. D. Concannon: During the miners' strike, thousands of miners did voluntary work getting coal to hospitals, old-age pensioners and so on. In that case the Supplementary Benefits Commission wisely used the old interpretation. There was not the rigid interpretation being made now. If there had been, there would have been a lot more trouble during the miners' strike, just as we are now having in the dock strike.

Mr. Dunn: My hon. Friend reinforces the argument that if one wants essential services to continue then one must turn a blind eye—although I do not think that a blind eye is necessary because this is a new interpretation. Those I have spoken to at local and national level and even the Chairman of the Commission have all tried to be as helpful as possible, but they insisted that this was the interpretation which they had to apply

But the word is "may" and not "shall". The 1966 Act said "may", although the 1971 Act said "shall". This matter must be looked at by the Government.
If it is said that there will be some reduction in supplementary benefits or that the supplementary benefits will not be easily available in the first 15 days, that will not help the men to go back to work. These men are fighting for the right to work, for a dignity which they have created from what was catastrophe in the docks. Those who know the industry know how undignified it once was. The Government must realise that these men will not surrender lightly.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: The hon. Gentleman refers to the dock workers, and I am sure many hon. Members on this side would agree with some, if not all, of the points he is making. Would he agree that other workers have been faced with a similar situation; for example, the textile workers? Tens of thousands of textile workers have been forced to leave their trade through redundancies and other circumstances. Did these people strike? Did they feel that to hold the nation to ransom—I know that is an emotive phrase—was the way to remedy the situation? No. They realised that by taking the action which the dockers are taking they would be stabbing themselves in the back, and they felt it was better to seek a remedy in a constructive and responsible fashion without putting other workers out of a job. Will the hon. Gentleman deal with that before he sits down?

Mr. Dunn: If I did I would inflame a situation which needs no aggravation. I do not wish to be impertinent or discourteous but I do not wish to follow that line because a political controversy would not help my people. I am sorry that it did not help the hon. Gentleman's consistuents. The Government must co-ordinate all facets of the services. The Home Secretary is responsible for applying the emergency regulations, and I ask him to do this in a way which will not upset the balance and good nature of the working of essential services. There is even a possibility of these services being extended, and I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to do his utmost in that direction.

9.43 p.m.

Mr. James Hill: I am sure that in our heart of hearts we all knew that this strike would happen, no matter which Government were in power or what legislation had been brought to the Statute Book. It has been boiling up for many years. I know that in my constituency this industrial revolution of containerisation has created fears which these men are only too quick to show. There has been a tremendous rundown in the labour force required to operate a modern port.
In the days of the large passenger ships 200 or 300 dock workers could look forward to several days' work in turning round one of these ships and equipping her with all the necessary supplies and stores. Now 50,000-ton container ships come in and 20 or 30 men can turn them around in 36 hours. The fear has been there for the last decade, and it has now come out, like a boil. It has burst, and we, the nation, are suffering.
I agree that the dockers have a problem, and it is only too obvious to say that we should defend their right to voice their opinions and their fears. They must not, and cannot, carry their strike to the ultimate. This debate has a very small focal point. We are standing here for the nation. It is a nation that cannot sit still while it is being forced to complete standstill. The nation demands a firmness from its Members of Parliament and from the Government. There is no profit in the Governing bringing in emergency powers and then sitting back and letting the standstill continue.
We must express our views, and the view of this side of the House is plain: the Jones-Aldington Report was good. There may have been imponderables which no docker would trust the employer to tie up, but I am firmly convinced that Mr. Jones and Lord Aldington had found a solution. The narrowness of the vote— 38 to 28, with 18 abstentions—must have proved that the report was not completely unacceptable. It would be very gratifying if tomorrow agreement could be reached so that in a short time the docks were back to normal and all the essential cargoes were cleared.
Perhaps in Southampton, where we have had full employment in the docks,

the position has not been so acute. The big problem is the transfer of labour. Each year in Southampton 600 to 700 temporary dockers work in handling the citrus fruit. The season for this starts in March and generally ends at the end of July. In view of the amount of labour we need, the registration of dockers might well be increased. But it is impossible for dockers from, say, London or Hull to move freely about the country. The housing problem, for example, can do nothing but exacerbate the situation.
I have had many telephone calls from dockers who wished to remain anonymous and from others who gave their name but did not want it repeated. They have told me about the feeling which existed at the union meeting in Southampton which took place the day after the refusal to accept the Jones-Aldington Report. There is a great deal of discontent among the workers. Dockland is like a happy family. I say that with respect. The dockers protect each other. If a man is sick or unable to a hard job, his fellow workers will protect him. I estimate that there are 50 dockers in Southampton disabled as a result of their work over many years who would be extremely happy and willing to receive the proposed redundancy payments, which I, and I am sure most of us here, regard as quite handsome. But that is by the way. Mr. Jones, Lord Aldington and the dockers' delegates will sort out that matter between them.
My great concern relates to some of the islands which rely on us. I think mainly of Guernsey and perhaps Jersey. Tomatoes are having to be airlifted from Guernsey. Only 300 tons have been airlifted since last Friday. Yesterday's estimate was that 2,670 tons of tomatoes had had to be dumped in the gravel pits of Guernsey. Guernsey's economy is taking a hammer-like blow. It is estimated that it will take almost five years for it to recover from what has happened this year.
The waste is appalling. In the Isle of Wight there are three banana boats containing 40 million rotting bananas. In the cargo sheds in the Southampton Western Docks there are 50,000 cases of rotting grapefruit, lemons and oranges. The medical office of health has said that


the flies are proving to be a great nuisance.
Can we possibly allow this to go on? I think that the Southampton dockers are only too willing to move emergency supplies. We trade with the West Indies which is not a prosperous nation or one that can afford to lose cargoes of bananas. Boats are going back to the West Indies trailing miles of cartons of bananas on the high seas which have been unloaded by the ships' crews.
On the other hand, there is the bright spot that the dockers have not picketed passenger ships and the office staff are unloading and loading them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) mentioned the crisis in animal feed, which is looming large. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture has said that we have three or four days' supply. But the animal feed deadline is creeping closer, particularly for the pig and poultry producers. The National Farmers' Union poultry officer for the South has said that the producers who are mixing their own feed are finding it increasingly difficult to get supplies of maize and soya now that all the ports are closed. The Government might have a dialogue with the dockers urging them to move this protein food. The strike has pushed up the price of maize and soya by about £8 a ton. Shortages cause inflation. Prices must escalate. Which is more important, 12 rhinos or millions of farm animals? In the end it is not the Government but the people who pay the piper.
I am glad that the dialogue is at a level known as a low profile. I hope that troops will not be needed and that the dockers will give full co-operation. They must realise the hardship they are causing to the nation, to their own families and to the family of every worker who depends on the docks for a livelihood.
I venture to say that we are not far off a settlement. I should like the message to go out from the House that, with a low profile from here and with sound common sense, the Jones-Aldington Committee will be able to agree with the delegates and end the strike before the week is up.

9.55 p.m.

Mr. Stanley Orme: I raised earlier with the Home Secretary the question of a report on the present state of negotiations concerning the Jones-Aldington Committee. I believe that the House is entitled to have an interim report this evening, or even tomorrow. Many of the consequences which have been eloquently spelt out by Conservative Members—and none better than by the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen)—arise because of the docks strike, which has arisen because of the difficult industrial situation and the feeling among dockers of concern for their own security.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Kirkdale (Mr. Dunn) from his knowledge of the Liverpool dock situation, emphasised the fear of unemployment and of what happens with a changing job situation, a fear which is now accelerating in our society.
I should like to say to the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) that this situation has happened in the past when cotton workers have been unhappy about their jobs going by the board. The dockers now face the same situation in their industry. Perhaps the reduction in the textile industry occurred against a background of full employment. The change which is taking place in the docks, and which has been accelerated, is taking place against the background of a large measure of unemployment which has hardened at around the 900,000 mark. In the present industrial situation, what is being said to the dockers is "Your industry has changed, rationalisation is taking place and, therefore, you must accept the inevitable."
I have in my constituency a number of dockers who work in the Manchester docks, and it must be remembered that in terms of turnover Manchester is the fourth largest port in the country. The Manchester dock labour force has diminished by over 50 per cent. and this trend has occurred on a national scale in recent years. The fear among the dockers is reflected in their present anger and anguish.
I spoke to some of the London dockers who came to the House of Commons the other night to listen to the debate on the industrial relations situation. They


said "We have had all these changes in recent years, many committees have considered the situation and there have been eight or nine attempts to try to protect our jobs." They then said "This is possibly our last throw and we are going to make a stand."
We must remember that in considering the vote which led to the rejection among dockers of the Jones-Aldington Report—a report that went a long way to meeting problems but did not resolve them—the abstentions in the main related to the unregistered ports.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, thanking Her Majesty for Her Most Gracious Message communicating to this House that Her Majesty deems it proper by Proclamation, made in pursuance of the Emergency Powers Act, 1920, as amended by the Emergency Powers Act, 1964, and dated 3rd August, 1972, to declare that a state of emergency exists.

To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

Orders of the Day — BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That the Motions relating to Privilege (Bills brought from the Lords), Election of the Speaker and Procedure, and the National Debt Bill [Lords], and the Poisons Bill [Lords] may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. John Stradling Thomas.]

Orders of the Day — EMERGENCY POWERS

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the Regulations made by Her Majesty in Council under the Emergency Powers Act, 1920, by Order dated 3rd August, 1972, a copy of which was laid before this House on 3rd August, shall continue in force, subject however to the provisions of Section 2(4) of the said Act.—[Mr. R. Carr.]

10.0 p.m.

Mr. Stanley Orme: When you intervened, Mr. Speaker, I was dealing with the dockers' delegate conference and trying to point out the difference there will be when that conference is recalled. It will then be absolutely essential that the new JonesAldington talks result in positive concrete proposals because the industrial situation

has moved on since the previous delegate vote was taken. It is important to remember when talking of majority and minority votes that the 38 votes I have mentioned represent 75 per cent. of the work force and that because of the constitution of the conference the unregistered dockers have the largest proportion of votes.
What is now needed is action in regard to the stuffing and stripping of containers by these firms. There is no doubt that these companies moved from the ports so that as employers they would be free to employ such labour as they wanted. We have the market force at work, and the Government cannot complain if the dockers react by fighting for their share of that work. When we speak of putting registered dockers into the container depots we are talking about putting them in at higher rates than the employers want to pay their workers. In the case of the famous Chobham Farm firm there was a quite considerable discrepancy in the rates, and this must be bridged.
The Government must make it absolutely clear that if we want ordered industrial relations in the docks and do not want the industry to spread out, with all the problems that that would involve, the dockers must be given a right of employment within the container depots The dockers are not asking that those who are now working the depots should be sacked but rather that registered dockers should have the right to be employed there.
At the time of the 1970 General Election I was talking to the dockers in my constituency about the nationalisation of the ports. They made the point to me that it was no good just nationalising the major ports as they stood, because if we did not deal with the container situation there would be trouble. They were saying that through their union but there was no urgency then, and we know that in industrial relations matters it is only when people are put to the nth degree of stress and strain and the cord breaks that we have a strike. Then we set up committees and then we ask people like Mr. Jones and Lord Aldington to work night and day to find a solution because the matter has become one of national urgency.
The dockers, like the miners, have proved that they are very important


people in the community. Our survival depends on the work they do. Therefore it is vital to see that at least the major employers involved in the container depots meet the point so that when the dockers' delegate conference reassembles there is something concrete to put before it.
We shall not be able to blur the issue. If anyone thinks that the delegate conference can be recalled and that nine of the dockers who abstained last time can be persuaded to support the Jones-Aldington Report as it stands at the moment, I do not think that he is being realistic. It will not be acceptable. I believe that many dockers who voted for the report realise now that perhaps there is a real chance to get concrete changes written into the proposals. As I said earlier, dockers have made the point to me that this is possibly their last throw. As a consequence they intend to fight very hard.
I do not think that even now many right hon. and hon. Members realise the seriousness of the present situation. Many believe that it will be only necessary to devise a form of words and to recall the delegate conference to accept, following which everyone will go back to work. It would be an absolute disaster if the recalling of the delegate conference resulted in a narrow vote or in the proposals again being rejected. The result might be separate strikes in individual ports, splinter action and reaffirmations of the strike. In those circumstances we should be on a slippery slope. Next time it has to be right.
I remind the House of what my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice) said about the container employers. We have seen what has happened in the case of Lord Vestey. Frankly, some of these people have to be brought to heel because they are basically responsible for the present problem. If the dockers' case had been met earlier, it could have been offset—

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I hope the hon. Gentleman will explain exactly what he means by his last few sentences concerning the Vestey group and the Vestey company involved in the dispute. At the same time, I hope he will agree that methods of handling cargo and of transportation are bound to

change. No. Government of any complexion can guarantee to this House that the number of dockers employed will remain unchanged for any period of time in the future. Surely what the unions should do is to try to get alternative industry into areas where redundancies are likely to occur and, at the same time, to urge through the other unions and through the company organisations that additional retraining facilities must be provided.

Mr. Orme: The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) has made an extremely long intervention. It would not be fair to those of my hon. Friends who still wish to speak if I were to attempt to answer all his points. There are some obvious answers which I could give him. I think that the position of Lord Vestey was covered fully only the other day. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition slapped down the Prime Minister firmly on that. What is more, right hon. and hon. Members probably have read the "Insight" investigation with its revelations about the money made by the Vestey Corporation reselling its properties. It needs no further explanation from me.
I shall not take up what the hon. Gentleman has said since so many of my hon. Friends still wish to speak. I could answer his arguments. However, I want to make one further point, and it concerns social security. There is a misconception about social security and a considerable amount of colour is introduced into the argument. Trade unionists see the argument rather differently. They all believe rightly that they have contributed to social security. They do not consider it a charity. They regard it as a right. Therefore, when they ask for benefit they believe they are entitled to it.
If the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) knew the damage he was doing among trade unionists in this regard he might desist from some of the outrageous statements he makes. Social security for families, when properly applied for, is justifiable. At least, I should have thought so in a civilised society.
Dockers, particularly in the Orkney and Shetland area, offered to unload perishable and essential goods; then they


were told they must accept their wages when they have previously paid them into a charity, and were denied social security benefit after having worked. That may seem to some people an odd compromise. It might almost seem a British way of resolving problems, but it has resolved vital problems. If it moves into other ports it would be disastrous. I should like to underline what my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Kirkdale (Mr. Dunn) said about it adding another dimension to the situation. It could become an issue, just as the Industrial Relations Bill became an issue at the last dockers' delegate conference, if the Minister brought in the troops to try, as it were, forcibly to remove cargoes now in the ports.
I now turn to the regulations themselves. As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) said, they are extremely far-reaching. They give the Government powers which I should not like any Government to have. Under a Labour Government I voted against emergency powers just as I voted against them under this Government when the last lot of emergency powers arose out of the railway dispute.
These emergency powers are not being opposed. I assume that my right hon. and hon. Friends are trying not to heighten the position within the docks particularly whilst the Jones-Aldington Committee is sitting. That meets the immediate situation. However, the Minister will be under strong pressure if the regulations are brought into play in the next few weeks without the House first being recalled. I believe the House would have to be recalled in those circumstances, because we would be moving into another industrial situation. We would be going into a new phase. In consequence, I believe the House would have to be recalled. The Home Secretary would be under the strongest pressure to recall the House if any vital changes took place.
Like everybody else, I hope the dispute will be resolved. I have spent my working life in industrial relations, which concern free collective bargaining. That

means making agreements. We have all been involved in that kind of thing. I recognise how intractable some issues can be. This is an intractable issue. In consequence, the Minister and the Government must realise that they bear a major part of the responsibility in this situation.
We have the background of the Industrial Relations Act. It seems odd for the Home Secretary to talk about us making political capital or debating issues which were not previously debated in the House. I recall that in 1964–65, under a Labour Government, when industrial disputes were raised in this House it was unthinkable for the Minister even to make comments; he just said "Negotiations are taking place. I am sure hon. Members will await the outcome of those negotiations", and so forth. That might have been right or wrong, but that is how such matters were conducted. Now everything is conducted against the background of a political court and the Industrial Relations Act. Those who have read the recent articles written by Lord Justice Devlin know that the law has been brought into disrepute.

Mr. Peter Rees: Nonsense.

Mr. Orme: I assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that many members of his profession are concerned about how the law has been affected, other than the Industrial Relations Act.
Many of us speak in this debate because of our knowledge of the far-reaching draconian powers which the Government are taking. We speak against the background of the docks issue which many of us know would have been difficult to resolve, but there was no need for a dock strike. It was forced on the dockers by the Government and by the attitude of the employers. It is against that background that those of us who feel passionately about industrial relations and the need for good industrial relations want to see this issue resolved. The Government have the major responsibility for the present situation.

Mr. Speaker: I understand that it is the desire of the House that the Opposition Front Bench spokesman should rise to speak at ten minutes to Eleven. That means that there are about 35 minutes left. I hope that it will be possible for the Chair to call two hon. Members from each side in that time.

10.17 p.m.

Mr. John E. B. Hill: The hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) criticised these powers for being extreme, but I think he will acknowledge that if emergency powers had to be taken at all they must be extreme powers to cover any eventuality.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is to be hoped that very little, if any, use will be made of the powers. The hon. Gentleman said that the strike had taken place against the background of fear on the part of the dockers, fear about their employment in future and about the possibility of their jobs disappearing as a result of technological change. That has obviously been a true and long-standing factor in this dispute but, as one of my hon. Friends said, there are other industries which have declining labour forces and are shrinking.
It is difficult to assume that any group of workers will have a prescriptive right to any job or type of job. It seems to me that in reaching a settlement, which we all want to see—and I mean a settlement of the whole future, and not just of this dispute—we must emphasise that the pattern of industry is continually changing, be it transport or any other industry. The difficulty is that it is not easy to ask the older members to change their jobs—there comes a time when it is difficult to be re-trained—but the younger members must face the desirability or the prospect of re-training for some different employment. After all, this is implicit in all our educational teaching.
I think that the hon. Gentleman has a point when he says that the difficulty here is that this shrinking of numbers employed from 80,000 to 40,000 is taking place against the background of unemployment, and this undoubtedly makes it more serious and more difficult to accept. But where I disagree with the hon. Gentleman is in thinking that this is the

dockers' last chance or, even if they thought that, that they were right so quickly to resort to the ultimate sanction instead of waiting to see what the Aldington-Jones Committee would recommend.
It is in the public interest and part of the public good will that no long-established section of the working community should have a great sense of grievance, but one has to face the fact of changing technology and cushion the effects of the change as much as possible.
I shall touch on several points which have already been raised. I wanted to take part in the debate because I and my constituents are concerned about the flow of raw materials required for agriculture. Reverting to the vital question—in point of time—of the feeding stuffs supply, I was very heartened to hear what my right hon. Friend had to say in general. I emphasise that the difficulties are uneven. It may be that the big compounders have fairly large stocks in hand. The people I am concerned with mainly are those smaller compounding merchants who rely on home grown supplies and imported proteins, and farmers who mix their own feeding stuffs and use their own cereals.
At this time of the year, a few days before the harvest begins, or when it is just beginning, there is a great shortage of or virtually no existing home grown cereals in stock. Therefore, the smaller men are in this difficulty. I do not quite know what the time factor is. I have heard it put at about five days. I ask the Minister and the House to bear in mind that it will take at least three days for any proteins or other materials released at the docks to reach the animals, because time is taken up in transporting and compounding materials and then getting them out to the farms. I, too, have had reports that if one large enterprise in my constituency cannot get more supplies in the next five days, 1,500,000 five-week-old chickens will have to be slaughtered and buried.
Farm people, who have to cope with the vagaries of nature and the weather, find it hard to follow the mentality of people who allow perishable goods that are needed, whether for human or for animal food, to rot. They find that inexplicable because it seems to be throwing


away a production opportunity. Many hon. Members have stressed that this strike throws other workers out of work. It inflicts great losses on perfectly innocent third parties, whether they be producers in the Channel Isles or, as we all ought to bear in mind, people in the under-developed countries needing every form of trade and sustenance that they can get, such as those in the Caribbean.
The serious worry of myself and many in my constituency is that by this stoppage the dockers are throwing away opportunities for themselves and for the country, and this must injure the public good will towards their general cause. Hon. Members have expressed the anxiety we must all feel—the hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) referred particularly to this—over the damage that can be rapidly inflicted upon the community as a whole in these matters. It is not merely a grave financial burden but one that is destroying opportunities for future trade expansion, and so, in a sense, it is building up the forces of unemployment ahead, instead of reducing them.
All the losses and many of the settlements tend to be inflationary because payments are made which certainly outrun productivity and production. I think that everyone is against inflation in general, but whenever their own particular interests or employment are concerned there is an exception. In those cases nobody cares sufficiently for the public interest and need which each emergency injures. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State stressed that the Government have a duty to protect the essentials of life for the whole community.
The dockers are in the forefront, because they are manning one of the bottlenecks in the economy. They are able to put pressure not only on their employers and others with whom wage bargaining is a necessary part of industrial relations but also on the users of their services and on the community as a whole.
Some very important questions arise. Employees in all bottleneck sectors—whether on the railways, on the docks, in electricity generation, or wherever it may be—can, if they stick together, hold up the whole nation's work and livelihood. Such people all too often feel that they have little to lose and perhaps something

to gain by using what should be a weapon of last resort too early in the proceedings.
On the critical question of whether to strike or not to strike, many of my constituents who live and work in the countryside and in small towns, not in great conurbations—though we have a surprising amount of industry think that the balance has become tilted in favour of strike action, so that to strike ceases to be a weapon of last resort and is used as a direct bargaining weapon.
I hope that against the background of this emergency the Government will consider the need to redress the balance at least by ensuring that the Government do not appear to be insuring strikers against the costs of striking which they have traditionally borne. I know that it has been said that there is great hardship at a time of strike because the workers do not receive strike money. I accept this; but the fact remains that the public believe that on the whole the balance has become tilted slightly in favour of striking because the consequences are not financially as severe as they have been in the past. This may be a good thing from a social point of view, but from the point of view of the national economy it has unfortunate results.
We cannot continue risking interruptions to the economy which, as hon. Members on both sides have agreed, have a bad effect on our prospects. I doubt whether the ordinary citizen realises just how fragile our free democratic society is and how vulnerable it is to deliberate injury by any minority sectional interest which happens at the time to have power to injure it. I agree that this does not mean only sections of workers. There may be other sections of people with power to injure society.
We need to build some defences, in the community's interest, to prevent this injury from taking place in the future. As the hon. Member for Coventry, North said, our society rests upon a broad consensus, upon the mutual acceptance of obligation and responsibilities as well as upon rights. It rests above all on the constitutional authority of freely elected Governments and on respect and desire for the certainty and security which flows from the maintenance of law and order. I believe that the silent majority want and expect Governments to build adequate defences and prevent the injury


that minorities have repeatedly inflicted upon the public interest in the past. Amid all the applications of modern technology and the inter-dependence of most sectors of an industrial economy, we have to reconcile the necessary freedom of any worker ultimately to withhold his labour and put pressure upon his employer with the maintenance of the public services and the national interest.
It is not easy. Unless all those who want to work for and not against this country concentrate their minds, their hearts and their energies on this necessity we shall destroy our own best prospects and present our competitors with the successes that we should have won for ourselves.

10.32 p.m.

Mr. Kevin McNamara: I have listened with interest to the hon. Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. John E. B. Hill) and, although I do not intend to pursue all his arguments, which are easily refuted, I feel that I must make one point.
It is impossible to isolate one section of the community and say that those people are making everybody else the victims of their action. Those people are themselves victims. They are victims of the change which is taking place in that community. If defences are to be sought they cannot be sought against that section of the community. A fence cannot be built around that single section. Instead, society must be organised in such a way as to be able to meet technical change, job loss and alteration in circumstances, in order to cushion the effects of all this upon particular sections of the community, be it the dockers, the miners, the railwaymen or even millionaires. The Government are failing to meet that problem.
This is the fourth state of emergency in two years—an average of one every six months. It is the second state of emergency declared in relation to the dockers. I am beginning to wonder whether under this Government, because of their industrial and social policies, the normal thing will be for us to live in a permanent state of emergency with occasional periods of grace when there is no emergency. That is what is happening as a result of the Government's policies. They are creating a situation

in which they are not trusted by the ordinary working people. The people do not believe them. They have seen what the Government have done to the social services, to labour relations, and they have seen all the nasty little bits of legislation, like the 1971 Act, and they have had enough. In addition, the Government are seen to be taking away their jobs.
I do not want to deal with the containerisation dispute because it has been adequately dealt with by my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Kirkdale (Mr. Dunn) and Salford, West (Mr. Orme). There is also the problem of the unregistered ports, the non-scheme ports, the pilot ports which have developed over the last few years and on occasions have been financed by public money. Two things have happened on the Humber. Ships are going up the Trent to places with small wharves which have blossomed overnight with the use of cheap labour to unload the ships. Great public investment in the major docks has been disregarded as more ships have used these wharves.
Second, there has been a growing tendency in what have traditionally been parts of the dock estate, as in my own constituency of Bankside, for wharves to be taken over and for strange interpretations to be put on the wording of the dock labour scheme, to such an extent that jobs which traditionally have been dockers' jobs have suddenly become jobs for non-registered dock labour. Because a cocoa mill or an oil and seed mill has been translated into a sawmill, a wholly different interpretation of the scheme, as, for example, at Barchard's wharf, has resulted in tremendous difficulty.
I take the example of Barchard's wharf because the situation there is of great significance for the Government in considering when emergency powers should be used by the port committees. In order to reach Barchard's wharf, ships will have to go down the River Hull, under a couple of bridges, past wharves and quays where registered dock labour is used. There is a strong rumour in Hull that a ship laden with timber is to come alongside that quay, a quay which has already been the subject of dispute before the Industrial Tribunal, which the National Dock Labour Board and the union lost and which has now gone to appeal.
The appeal will not be heard for a long time. If a timber ship arrives and seeks to land timber at that wharf, there will be trouble. I am making no threats when I say that. I am simply stating that there will be trouble if such a ship goes there while the dispute is on. There will be 2,000 Hull dockers about in the narrow streets of the old part of my constituency, with the congestion of lorries, with policemen about, and no room for people to move. There is little enough room there in ordinary circumstances. It is a bottleneck, and there will be trouble.
I ask the Government to make sure that instructions go out to my port committee that there shall be no landing of timber cargoes at wharves which are the subject of dispute or appeal at the moment. If there is such a landing, it will be a positive trailing of coats. I understand that the employer concerned will not say "Yea" or "Nay" as to whether it is the intention to land more cargo there. I believe, also, that he says that it is a question of when the shipments come. This is not good enough. We want positive action from the port committee.
I turn now to the situation in relation to the unregistered ports within the Humberside area. There were some ugly scenes on television last night, when dockers were seen to be treated very nastily. I believe that the boot has been on the other foot tonight, though I hope that it has not. I have heard a statement about the situation read by one hon. Member opposite. What I urge upon the Government is this. If ordinary decent God-fearing men like Kevin Brady, the former regional chairman of my union, are suddenly found in the police station being charged there will be great problems. These are not mindless militants; they are honest good men with families, with houses, with jobs which they are seeking to protect. The Government do not seem to understand where they are going in their policy of confrontation with ordinary decent people.
I hope that we shall have a statement from the Government about the situation in Lincolnshire. I hope also that we shall hear from them on another matter. When the pickets were seeking to go out from Hull today to picket the

port, it was found that somebody had put a "black" on the bus companies which up to yesterday had been supplying the buses for them. Under the Industrial Relations Act, that may well have been an unfair industrial practice, but I am not concerned with that, and I do not want to have anything to do with that Act. What I am concerned about is reports that telephone calls have been made threatening drivers and the firms involved if they hired the buses out to dockers. The police have a duty to check up on any person who is threatening a breach of the peace, threatening to damage vehicles or injure men driving them. I hope that the Home Secretary will call for a report from the Chief Constable of Hull about what investigations he is making into this.
I have two final points. The first concerns the money being given to dockers who are over 55. The £4,000 is regarded as a great sum, and in many ways it is, but let us think of it in the docker's terms. He receives £4,000 and six-months' wage-related unemployment benefit. After that he goes on to basic benefit, and no social security. He cannot get on to social security until that money has been whittled down to £800. Does he blow it all or eke it out? Above all, what is his chance of being re-employed at 55 or over in a city with the enormous unemployment problems that we have in Hull, especially for men?
Secondly, it is not good enough that in the Jones-Aldington Report the problems of the unregistered ports are being put down for a second stage of the discussion. Humberside dockers, dockers in other areas, particularly the Port of London, are now discovering that the question of the non-scheme ports and the unregistered wharves is of primary importance, far exceeding for us the container issue. This problem must be solved.

10.42 p.m.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I am pleased to make a brief contribution to the debate, because I have found it very interesting. The low profile of the debate will perhaps have contributed to helping to improve the situation in the country at large by ensuring that a settlement is more readily reached in the tragic dispute which faces the dockers and the country.
I was particularly impressed by what the hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) said. I cannot say this very often when commenting on his contributions to debates, but I believe that his contribution tonight was very useful. He touched the very core of the matter in describing to the House the feelings of the dockers, people who are concerned about their future employment, people who see their industry changing. They see the method of transportation and shipment changing. Therefore, they are absolutely right to feel anxious about what is happening in their industry.
I should like to return to the basis of my interjection earlier in the debate, when I mentioned the textile workers. Here we have a similar case, where an industry has changed dramatically, where redundancies have occurred because of automation and because of the changes of methods of production. But they were not the best-paid workers in the country while the House is aware that the dockers are by any standard of today receiving pretty reasonable wages. What is more, the textile workers did not have the benefit of the recommendations of the Jones-Aldington Report. In that report there is the basis of a satisfactory solution to the problem facing us today.
I should have asked the hon. Member for Salford, West whether he considered that strike action was the answer to the problem that the dockers face. I do not believe that it is. I believe that by striking not only are they alienating public opinion but they are harming their own industry. I am of the opinion that the dispute is not just about their future but that we should draw into the debate the future of the drivers who are involved in the container dispute as well. But I do not wish to go into that aspect of the case in great detail tonight.
Several of my hon. Friends have raised the question of agricultural feeding stuffs and the effect that the strike is likely to have in a short time upon the agricultural industry. My hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. John E. B. Hill) spoke of hundreds of thousands of poultry which will shortly have to be slaughtered unless the necessary protein feedstocks are available. Tens of thousands of pigs will also have to be slaughtered unless the necessary feeding stuffs are made available to farmers. This

is blatant waste, not only because it will result in higher prices to the housewife but because millions of people in the world get below a subsistence diet. That is not a satisfactory picture to present to the world as we destroy hundreds of thousands of tons of food and slaughter thousands of animals.
Hon Members have also spoken about social security payments. There is a growing concern in the country about the availability of social security payments to the families of those who go on strike. Many people openly advocate the withdrawal of benefits from all who go on strike, but I believe that it would be wrong to do so. Perhaps consideration should be given, however, to benefit only being paid to the families of strikers when they are on official strike or when the full, accepted negotiating procedure has been exhausted before the strike has been called. I do not wish to raise the temperature of the debate, because the fact that it has been in low profile has helped and I hope that those negotiating will take from it the message that the whole House and the country requires a settlement as soon as possible.
The Industrial Relations Act has given cause for criticism. It is being used by some to excuse the present dispute. Whether hon. Members opposite like the Act or not, it is a fact of life. It is the law of the country. Whether one likes a law or not, while it is a law it should be obeyed. It is perfectly right and legal to try within the constitutional rules to change or amend the law, and any future Labour Government will be able to change the law by majority of the House. But it must be done by a majority vote of the House and not by violence or intimidation.
I hope that all those involved in the dispute, on both sides, will consider the genuine interests of the country. I believe that if people perhaps paused before they took some impetuous action and considered the welfare of the whole community of the United Kingdom and all the effects their action would have on the economic future of the nation, we would achieve more harmonious industrial relations which hon. Members opposite have mentioned, and no doubt the performance of the economy and the country would benefit accordingly.

10.51 p.m.

Mr. Robert C. Brown: In the few minutes generously allocated to me by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heifer), I want to make three points.
There can be no denial that on Tyneside there will be dockers sincerely hoping that the Jones-Aldington Committee can produce a report which will result in the recall of the docks conference and a return to work. I do not believe that Tyneside dockers are different from dockers elsewhere.
We hear a lot about holding the country to ransom from the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), but how did this dispute begin and why? If the people at the root of the dispute, the container firms, would give some simple assurances that would not cost them too much in terms of a climb-down I am certain that the Jones-Aldington Committee could quickly get the conditions for a return to work.
I appeal to the Home Secretary to take immediate steps to introduce price control should the dispute carry on. He has talked about the difficulty of enforcement, and I appreciate that in the short term it would be impossible to enforce fully. I appeal to him in the interests of the housewives of this country, particularly the wives of lower-paid workers, to introduce price control rapidly. The vast majority of the people are law-abiding, and, while it is not unnatural for anyone to want to turn an "easy buck", retailers are no different from any one of us. The very fact that there is a law will be the enforcement that the right hon. Gentleman needs.

10.53 p.m.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: The debate has been both interesting and important. It is regrettable that we have not had a full attendance, because the issues under discussion are of the greatest importance. The powers contained in these regulations are enormous.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) that no House of Commons should be prepared to give any Government such powers without the greatest scrutiny of the regulations and the motives of the Government. The Home Secretary seemed to try to avoid discussing the

dock strike and tried to suggest that the House ought to consider the regulations in isolation from the present situation. We have these regulations before us now because we have a dock strike. Whether or not we like it, we have to examine the background of the strike, look at its causes and see whether anything can be done to solve the problem. I hope, as does the whole House, that troops will not be used and that many of the regulations will not be used. I am not a prophet, but if they are used I can see that the difficulties in solving the dispute will be that much greater.
It has rightly been said tonight that this situation in dockland has been developing for a long time. The other day the Secretary of State for Employment agreed that the Industrial Relations Act was not responsible for this situation. This is true, in the sense that the problem is one of long standing. It did not develop overnight. It is interesting to note that in the port of Liverpool 2½ years ago the dockers' in association with the lorry drivers set up a joint committee to consider the whole question of containerisation. In March of this year that joint body issued a model agreement, as it were, which the local employers were asked to sign. In fact, 30 employers signed that agreement before Heatons decided to go to the National Industrial Relations Court. When Heatons decided to go to the Industrial Relations Court, bringing the law for the first time into what was a normal trade union negotiating process, the problem became complicated and much more difficult to solve. Therefore, while the problem is one of long standing, nevertheless it is also true to say that the problem has been aggravated, complicated and made much more difficult because of the operation of the Industrial Relations Act. That is what we are talking about when we say that the Industrial Relations Act has complicated the whole scene.
What are the dockers concerned about? I think my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Kirkdale (Mr. Dunn) made one of the best speeches in this debate—a speech full of understanding and knowledge of the situation in dockland. He ought to, because both he and I at one time worked on the Liverpool docks—not as dockers but in our own trades—alongside each other. We had constant


contact with the dockers and we understand their problems. He—and, indeed, my hon. Friends the Members for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) and Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara)—pointed out that what the dockers are concerned about is their future employment. It cannot be said that the dockers have not assisted in technological advances through their trade union organisation. They have assisted all along the line.
Let me give some figures. In London in 1968 there were 22,379 dockers; in 1972 the number had fallen to 14,765. In the port of Liverpool in 1968 the number of dockers was 12,130; in 1972 the number had fallen to 10,198. There is a similar situation in Hull, with a reduction of over 1,000 dockers. In Manchester there is a reduction. The only port in this country where there has not been a reduction is Southampton, and in that case in those four years the number of dock workers has gone up by only 63.
That is what the dockers are concerned about. They are not on strike because they want more money; they want guaranteed employment—the right to a job. When they see certain employers leaving the dock estates, establishing warehouses 10 or 15 miles away, and then employing workers at reduced rates of pay, they consider it as a piece of effrontery on the part of those employers. That is why the dockers are on strike.
I understand that the Government have been doing a little leaning on those recalcitrant employers who seem to be making it difficult to achieve a solution of the problem. The dockers did not trust the container firms. They were not prepared to believe them. They wanted the Jones-Aldington report strengthened, because they did not believe that the employers would automatically fall into line—and how right they have been proved in the last 10 days! The situation has developed precisely as the dockers foresaw it developing. That is why we have the strike. In those circumstances, the Government must lean on those container employers and make them come into line and accept the Jones-Aldington report, thus giving the dockers the guarantees that they want. If they do that we might achieve a solution to the problem.
The question of supplementary benefits has also been raised. My hon. Friend the

Member for Liverpool, Kirkdale did a first-class job in helping to solve the difficulties in Liverpool. I trust that the Government will take on board all the points that he made and ensure that the same thing is done in the other ports—especially in Scotland, because the people of the islands obviously need the goods that the dockers are prepared to shift provided that their social security benefits are not interfered with because they take voluntary action in loading and unloading the ships that go to the islands.
The Government cannot instruct the Chairman of the Supplementary Benefits Commission, but they can obviously talk to him, advise him, and tell him "This is our point of view. This is the position as it was before; therefore, we urge you to operate under the old interpretation." Surely the Government can assure us tonight that they will do that in respect of the other ports.
There is one more serious aspect of the social security question. When the relevant Measure went through the House last year I was on the Committee that dealt with it, as was my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West, and we both pointed out that the Measure was an adjunct of the Industrial Relations Act and that the Government were building up for themselves future difficulties if they operated it. I can remember the speeches that we made in Committee.
I want the Government to note what my hon. Friend said. He said that the dockers might well make it a condition of a return to work that there should be no "subbing", because they detest that concept, which we warned the Government about.
The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) had the fantastic idea which many of his hon. Friends seem to have that workers on strike get social security benefit. They do not. If the hon. Gentleman suggests that the families of workers on strike should be put under the threat of receiving no benefit because the husband or another member of the family is on strike, it is the most disgraceful suggestion that I have heard.

Mr. Winterton: rose—

Mr. Heffer: I am sorry that I cannot give way because I have given a promise to sit down at ten past eleven so that


the Solicitor-General will have time to reply.
I hope that the Government will take this point on board and will ensure that the Social Security Act, 1971, is amended at the earliest possible moment and that in the meantime the most generous interpretation is given to the Act so that dockers and other workers are not put in jeopardy.
I am very concerned, as I am sure most hon. Members are, about the regulations headed "Offences"; namely, Regulations 32, 33, 34 and 35, an Regulation 36 under the heading "Supplemental". Regulation 33 provides:
No person shall trespass on, or on premises in the vicinity of, any premises used or appropriated for the purposes of essential services".
I know that the Government will draw my attention to Regulation 38(1), the last paragraph of which appears to make the position clear:
Provided that a person shall not be guilty of an offence against any of these Regulations by reason only of his taking part in, or persons to take part in a strike.
That is all right. But in certain circumstances there can be an argument about whether picketing is loitering in the vicinity of premises connected with essential services.
I ask the Solicitor-General to give us a very firm assurance that these regulations will not be used in any circumstances against dock workers or other workers who are picketing in support of the present dispute, and that if dockers give out leaflets which explain the cause of the dispute they will not find themselves in difficulty under Regulation 35 because it could be interpreted as incitement, subversion, and so on.
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice), in opening the case for the Opposition, said that we might have to ask for the recall of Parliament if the situation became worse. If the Government contemplate using troops at any time within the next 28 days while these regulations are in force, I ask the Solicitor-General to assure us that they will not use troops unless they recall Parliament and give it an opportunity of discussing the situation. It seems to me to be absolutely vital that we should have that assurance.
Some of us, I must be quite honest, are not entirely happy that the Opposition are not opposing these regulations. Some of us perhaps felt that we should have followed the lead shown in relation to the miners' dispute, because the answer to disputes like this is not in the application of emergency regulations under the Emergency Powers Act but in the normal course of industrial relations matters of sitting round the table and solving the problem in that way. That is the only way in which to deal with disputes. Force, the threat of force, emergency powers, do not solve the problem. In the last analysis, it is only good sense and decent agreements on both sides that answer these problems.

11.12 p.m.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Geoffrey Howe): It is right, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) says, that the House should have taken as much time as is available today to scrutinise closely the powers which Her Majesty's Government are seeking from the House. It is entirely right, as hon. Members have pointed out, beginning with the right hon. Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice) and ending with the hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme), that the powers contained in these regulations are wide, and involve substantial alterations in many respects of the normal legal position.
It is for all those reasons that the 1920 Act provides for strictly defined parliamentary review both of the proclamation and of the regulations themselves, and lapse at the expiry of a calendar month, so that if, which certainly no one hopes or wants, the dispute should last for that length of time it would be necessary for the House to be recalled before 3rd September. I have noted, and my right hon. Friend has noted without making any comment on it, the point made by the right hon. Member for East Ham, North, about the possibility of notice being given by the Opposition in respect of earlier recall. I say no more about that.
The point about the present situation is not that we are seeking to have authority for these regulations as an answer to the dispute. As the hon. Member for Walton said, no one visualises the taking of emergency powers as answering any dispute. The taking of these powers


becomes necessary because the 1920 Act visualises the need that can arise in certain circumstances for the Government to exercise their clear duty to protect the essentials of life for the community, as the right hon. Gentleman pointed out. The Government certainly do not seek the powers, and the powers would not be used in any sense for the purpose of strike breaking except insofar as it is inevitably inherent for the use of powers in the last resort to protect the community.
The regulations are distilled from the experience of successive Governments. Regulations 32 to 36, creating offences, are common in the same form as in 1949 and 1966 under Governments of the Labour Party, and almost exactly the same point has been raised in those debates, whichever Solicitor-General of whichever Government has been replying to the debate, as that raised by the hon. Member for Walton. I can do no more than draw to his attention and to the attention of the hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) the limiting words in many of the regulations as, for example, the inclusion in Regulation 33(2) of words which make it plain that that offence can apply only to a person who
… shall, for any purpose prejudicial to the public safety"—
be in or near
… any premises used … for the purposes of essential services …".
The wider matters are governed by the proviso to Section 2(1) of the 1920 Act, which makes it plain that no powers can be exercised hereunder so as to
make it an offence for any person or persons to take part in a strike, or peacefully to persuade any other person or persons to take part in a strike.
In governance of that there is the wider proviso, referred to by the hon. Member for Walton of Regulation 38, which the hon. Gentleman has read, which makes it plain that peacefully persuading any other person or persons to take part in a strike cannot make any person guilty of an offence. The provisions of Regulation 35, to which the hon. Gentleman also referred, have to be read alongside those provisions as well. So in that respect the matter is as it always has been.
Even so, when all this has been said, the regulations are wide; but I should emphasise they are taken and required

for precautionary purposes. This Government, like any other Government, can be trusted, despite the misgivings of the hon. Member for Coventry, North, not to exercise powers of this kind unnecessarily and not to do so except with discretion and care, bearing in mind the point made by both my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) and the right hon. Member for East Ham, North.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry said, the powers must be used, if necessary, with decision; but he also made the point, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. John E. B. Hill), that it would not serve the interests of the dockers, the farming community, or anybody else for the powers to be used prematurely, lightly or unnecessarily.
The importance of preserving the fragile balance of unity, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South referred, is the responsibility of us all, of the Government and, indeed, of those on both sides taking part in an industrial dispute of this kind. But the Government, in the last resort, cannot escape from their duty to the community as a whole, whether to small or large farmers or to the inhabitants of the islands around our shores. It is right that both in the past and in this dispute the dockers have, in many respects, recognised their responsibility, too, and the Government will certainly do all they can to secure the continued cooperation of the dockers.
This is the importance of the point raised by several hon. Members about the possibility of the use of troops. The right hon. Member for East Ham, North, whose question was echoed to some extent by the observations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. James Hill), said that nobody would want troops to be used in any circumstances, save where it was absolutely unavoidable. Plainly and obviously, the Government would not contemplate the use of troops in this kind of situation, save only in the very last resort. Plainly and equally obviously, the Government are anxious to avoid that, if possible. But no Government at this stage in a dispute that could, although one hopes not, be of longer rather than shorter duration could give any final, open-ended or complete assurance that that necessity might not arise.


The Government will certainly strive to avoid that necessity.
This is why co-operation, in the interests of the community, notwithstanding the inevitable casualties of industrial warfare, is so important. This is why, as my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food pointed out earlier, my right hon. Friends have already approached the trade union leadership for its co-operation in this matter. Arrangements so far have been made at local level, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State remains ready to discuss the matter further at national level if it becomes necessary.
In this context, some importance must be attached to the point raised by several hon. Members about supplementary benefits. This matter has been raised not unduly contentiously, although we know there is anxiety about it, by my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), who criticised the general principle. I do not wish to go back over that debate again at the moment.
I am more concerned with the point raised by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Kirkdale (Mr. Dunn), who is an old friend of mine from the other side of the Mersey when we both represented Merseyside seats, and characteristically he raised it with moderation. I accept what he said, that in certain circumstances in other industrial disputes supplementary benefit has been paid to people working in the kind of way that he described, carrying essential cargoes and transferring their wages to charity; but, plainly, a decision along the lines of that recently taken had not been taken in those cases. So far as I am able to understand it, in all the previous circumstances, whether by luck, or design, or good management, or whatever it may be, the facts as they have presented themselves in the context of paragraph 27 of Schedule 2 had not been given to or been appreciated by those responsible for taking the decision.
The difficulty which the hon. Gentleman identifies has arisen, and the hon. Member for Salford, West referred to the observations made by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Security. He drew attention to the real difficulties if the relevant paragraph of Schedule 2

were to be construed other than in the way it has recently been construed, if the matter were applied across the board. He said:
Were we to allow people to earn money under any circumstances and then give it away there would be an enormous loophole in the law and it would mean that the taxpayer would be asked to really meet an open-ended commitment in circumstances of this kind. So the simple way out … is for them to do it without wages. They can then come along to the Supplementary Benefit Commission and receive help for their wives and families if they require it.
To that the hon. Member for Kirkdale said, "provided the employers forwent their profit". That is not so easy, because there may be circumstances in which the employers have to do the transit themselves. There may be circumstances in which there is no profit for the employers. There are substantial difficulties in trying to approach this matter in general terms, and I have tried to put the matter as fairly as I can.
However, obviously in the present situation of a national emergency, where we are really concerned with supplies that could be matters of life or death for these communities, again, whether by luck or good judgment, in the past it has been met by co-operation which has not been impeded by any decisions of this kind. It is not for me, speaking as a Law Officer, to comment upon the accuracy of this decision, which, as my right hon. Friend said, is subject to appeal to the statutory appeals tribunal. All I can say now is that the facts of the matter have been well ventilated during the debate.
I hope that hon. Members on both sides appreciate the difficulties in expanding the matter into a more general issue. The facts will be looked at and considered by those responsible for the administration of the supplementary benefits scheme. I hope, too, that all other people concerned will understand the difficulties of the wider matter.

Mr. Heffer: These appeals usually take a long time. In the circumstances, cannot things be speeded up so that there is almost an immediate appeal on this question?

The Solicitor-General: I take the hon. Gentleman's point. I am not sure precisely how the tribunal is constituted,


particularly at this time in the calendar year, but the matter has been well ventilated and it is not for me or for any other Minister to pronounce upon a matter when it is in that machinery. I am sure the hon. Gentleman's point will be noted.
The other matter which caused concern in a wider sense was the problem of animal feeding stuffs, which was raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Oswestry, and Norfolk, South. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Agriculture dealt with the present position to the satisfaction of my hon. Friends.
On the question of food more generally, the problem of price control was raised specifically by the right hon. Member for East Ham, North and was touched on by the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Robert C. Brown). There have been increases in the price of bananas and lemons and some other fruits of that kind for which we are dependent on imports, but the retail prices of other commodities have been steady and there seems at present absolutely no reason why the price of essential foods such as bread, meat, eggs, dairy products and sugar should increase in the immediate future, because in respect of those matters we have reserves and there is plenty of food coming off our own farms. It is on that basis that it is clearly sensible that the Government should take price control powers in a situation of this kind. But they are reserve powers. It would not he as easy as some hon. Members have suggested to apply a system that would work fairly and convincingly, and that is why the position is as my right hon. Friend spelled out in opening the debate.
One other matter which was the subject of some concern expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Stokes) was in relation to picketing. In this as in other disputes, I think that the House is concerned about some of the incidents which have been reported. All these matters are subject to the general law and it might be helpful if I were to repeat to the House what I think has not been said here before; namely, what my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General had to say about this in March, so that there will be no doubt about it.
Peaceful picketing for the purpose of peacefully obtaining information from or peacefully communicating information to someone or peacefully persuading someone to work or not to work in the context of an industrial dispute is protected by the law. If picketing goes beyond these peaceful purposes—here I quote from what my right hon. and learned Friend said on 10th March—
it can constitute a criminal offence. As the Donovan Commission explained in 1968, obstruction and intimidation of those wishing to work is unlawful.' So is molestation or threatening behaviour. It would be no defence to claim that such conduct was justified because it was done in the course of picketing. Nor do pickets have any right to require vehicles to stop so that they may communicate, for example, with the driver.
If pickets, by sheer numbers, seek to stop people from going about their lawful business, or from going to work or from delivering goods, they are not protected by the law, since their purpose is to obstruct rather than to persuade. Indeed it is very hard to see how the attendance of large numbers of pickets can be justified in the name of lawful, peaceful persuasion. The law protects peaceful persuasion but it does not confer any kind of right to obstruct or to intimidate.
The enforcement of the law is a matter for the police. They are charged with preserving the Queen's peace, and they must take such steps as are necessary to preserve it. If they reasonably anticipate that the numbers in attendance are such that there is a real possibility of a breach of the peace, or of obstruction of the highway, the police may request persons to leave or not to join a picket line. People who refuse to comply with such a request can be charged with obstructing the police in the execution of their duty.
The rôle of the police in enforcing the law is often difficult. They have a duty to see that those who wish to picket peacefully are able to do so. They also have a duty to ensure that those who wish to go on working despite the peaceful persuasion of pickets can do so. These duties are, on occasions, not easily reconciled and the decisions of the man on the spot often have to be taken in difficult conditions. But it is the duty of the police to enforce the law".
That is well understood.
Concerning the dispute itself, I repudiate in a sentence the suggestion that the dispute with which we are now faced is in any sense due to the Industrial Relations Act. Nor is it due to any kind of desire on the part of the Government for confrontation. The objective of the Industrial Relations Act was to improve voluntary procedures. That objective will not be helped by repeated cries for the repeal of the Act.
Of course the Government are aware of the problems of technological change. The Government have not been inactive in this particular dispute. The entire House agrees that the Jones—Aldington proposals are the basis of any settlement at which we can hope to arrive.
The right hon. Member for East Ham, North summarised aptly the need for reason on both sides in this dispute. The House may feel that it would not be right for the Government to be leaning too severely or fiercely in any direction. The hope of the House must be that as soon as possible we can get away from fighting over jobs to reasoning about them.
The present state of play with regard to the Jones—Aldington Committee is that it adjourned early this evening in order to meet again later this evening and again tomorrow morning. It would be wrong to conclude from the fact that meetings are continuing that the dispute is in any sense out of the wood; but plainly it is not without hope.
Meantime, the Government have a duty to seek these powers from the House They will be used with discretion. They are acknowledged on both sides of the House to be necessary, and I commend them to the House on that basis.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Regulations made by Her Majesty in Council under the Emergency Powers Act 1920 by Order dated 3rd August 1972, a copy of which was laid before this House on 3rd August, shall continue in force, subject however to the provisions of section 2(4) of the said Act.

Orders of the Day — LORDS BILLS (PRIVILEGE)

11.30 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department, Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Robert Carr): I beg to move,
That the new Standing Order and the Amendment to Standing Order No. 91 (Procedure upon bills whose main object is to create a charge upon the public revenue) hereinafter stated in the Schedule, be made.

Orders of the Day — SCHEDULE

Insert new Standing Order (Privilege (Bills brought from the Lords))

The House may proceed with any public bill brought from the Lords except a bill of aids and supplies provided that—

(a) it is so framed that no charge upon the people or upon public funds, unless it be such a charge as is defined in Standing Order No. 58 (Pecuniary penalties), is imposed or altered; and
(b) in the case of a bill which, if it were not so framed, would have as its main object the imposition or alteration of such a charge, a Minister of the Crown has informed the Clerk at the Table of his intention to take charge of it.

Standing Order No. 91 (Procedure upon bills whose main object is to create a charge upon the public revenue).

Line 14, at end add—

(2) The provisions of paragraph (1) of this Order shall apply to any bill brought from the Lords, of which a Minister of the Crown has informed the Clerks at the Table of his intention to take charge.

The Motion and draft Standing Order relate to an outstanding recommendation; namely, recommendation No. 6, of the Select Committee on Procedure in its Second Report last Session. It was debated shortly for the first time by the House last November. As will be obvious to the House without my saying so, it is somewhat technical, but, despite this, its main aim is fairly simple; namely, to provide an opportunity for the better balancing of the parliamentary programme between the two Houses with regard to the introduction of legislation.

Hitherto it has not been possible to proceed in this House with Bills brought from the other place if their main purpose was to impose a charge. This has prevented Governments from starting Bills in the other place in circumstances where I believe it would have been generally agreed that to do so would have been


quite appropriate and, particularly in the light of the sort of pressures of business we have seen this Session, would have been to the benefit of both Houses.

Under the proposal before us tonight this restriction would be removed, except in the case of Bills of aids and supplies, provided that in the case of a Bill coming from the other place of which the main object is to impose a charge the Clerks at the Table are informed that it is a Government Measure.

I do not propose to detain the House on this matter for more than a moment or two. I want merely to make two points. The first is to reiterate my predecessor's assurance that, although I consider that it would be advantageous to introduce legislation more evenly between the two Houses, the Government have no intention of making any major change in the distribution of legislation between the two Houses.

I recognise, as all my predecessors have done, that there are obvious categories of legislation which, by their political or financial nature, ought to be introduced in this House. There are, however, sometimes Bills which, although their main object may be to impose a charge of some kind, are of a type which would be regarded on both sides as suitable for introduction in the other place. It is with this category that the proposal is in practice concerned.

The second point is that when this matter was referred to briefly in the House on the previous occasion last November doubts were expressed about whether we were perhaps eroding the essential financial privileges of this House. I believe that the Standing Order as now drafted—there is a considerable difference from the way it was drafted when we first debated the matter last November—makes it quite clear that this will not be so. Bills coming from the other place under these provisions will be subject to the same procedure as are at present similar Bills of which the imposition of a charge is only a subsidiary purpose. The House will therefore have its attention drawn to them in the same clear ways.

I believe—I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), who with others raised this matter last November, is now

satisfied—that this Standing Order as drafted has removed the risk of the financial privileges of this House being surreptitiously eroded.

I am glad to say also that my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Sir Robin Turton), who unfortunately is in hospital—although, I am pleased to say, not with any serious complaint; he tells me it is for a very minor operation—and is therefore unable to be present tonight, has indicated as Chairman of the Procedure Committee that he is content with the proposed implementation of the substance of his Committee's recommendation.

I believe, therefore, that this enhanced opportunity for Bills to be started in the other place will be to the benefit of business in both Houses, in this House just as much as in the other place. I accordingly recommend the new Standing Order and the Amendment to Standing Order No. 91 to hon. Members and hope that they will meet with their approval.

11.36 p.m.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has indicated, the form of the Motion which he has placed before the House tonight is a considerable modification of that which was originally on the Order Paper seven or eight months ago. I should like to express my personal recognition to his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, for the very patient manner, involving lengthy and repeated reconsideration and correspondence, with which he dealt with the point which I and others raised during the previous debate.
I am entirely satisfied that the form of the new Standing Order fully preserves the privileges of this House, not merely in substance but also in form, in that anything which involves the privileges of this House will be brought to the attention of this House in the most formal and explicit way.
I venture to think that it was not a waste of time for my right hon. Friend the previous Leader of the House and those who assisted him to give their attention to this matter. The financial privileges of this House are not a bagatelle. They are not a matter of antiquarian curiosity. They are of live importance.
Although I think everyone would agree that we want the most efficient possible distribution of business between the two Houses, it would be wrong to suppose that this House should part in any way within our present Parliament with any of its financial privileges. We may in a different context be concerned with the surrender of those privileges which we have made to another authority outside the Realm, but at any rate in this Standing Order we are preserving those privileges within the ambit of Parliament, and I am grateful both to my right hon. Friend and to his predecessor.

11.38 p.m.

Mr. Michael Cocks: I must apologise to the Leader of the House for not hearing the beginning of his introductory remarks but, to be frank, it is so unusual to find the Government's timetable running up to the minute that I was a moment or two late.
I do not think it would be right for the House to pass the Motion without at least some concern being expressed that even in the most miniscule way we are strengthening the powers of the House of Lords. I think that the whole of our constitutional history has been a gradual erosion of the powers of the House of Lords, and even if there is the slightest strengthening of its powers it should be placed on record.
With regard to the nature of the scrutiny—the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) made the point strongly and I should like to reiterate this—it seems to me that if one were to read a textbook of parliamentary procedure and turned to the section on, say, consolidation Bills, it would seem that there was an elaborate procedure for scrutiny of these Bills. Yet in the very small sector in which I have taken an interest it seems to me that the House has become virtually a rubber stamp, often with no recommendations coming from the consolidating committee. Therefore, although the procedure may appear very good in the theoretical form, I hope we shall be extremely vigilant that as it develops we shall make quite sure that our scrutiny is practical as well as theoretical.

11.40 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: I am without instructions in this matter but on a question of this kind what satisfies the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) probably satisfies a great many people. What passes through his close and fastidious scrutiny and meets with his approval must surely have some virtue, and, therefore, I endorse what the Leader of the House has put to us.
I am old enough to remember among my earliest political recollections the great struggle between the Commons and the Lords and the Parliament Act, 1911. As a member of a radical Liberal family, I was swung very enthusiastically behind the battle against the Lords. We in the Commons have been jealous of our rights in the matter of expenditure and charges upon the citizen ever since. I suppose that one could allude in this connection to the fact that the House of Lords is somewhat more liberally based in its membership and composition than it was 60 years ago, although it is no more of an elected body now than it was then and probably some of its members who have been appointed in recent years have no more claim to be representative of the people than some of the hereditary peers of past generations. However, we take it as we find it.
I believe that the House of Lords is one of our insoluble constitutional problems, and it will probably be left alone for a very long time to come. The success of past attempts to reform it does not give any evidence that we should make a similar attempt in the near future, from whichever party it may come. Some things are best left alone, and the House of Lords may be one of them. So we have to look at that in relation to our business.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Michael Cocks) has said, we must take care not to provide the thin end of the wedge, but the responsibility of the House of Commons seems here to be fully safeguarded. A Minister of the Crown must assume responsibility and, as a representative Minister, must take full charge of a Bill of this kind. I think that the system has its conveniences. We could always amend our


Standing Orders if we found that experience pointed to the need for that.
There is some convenience in a better balance between the Lords and the Commons in the introduction of legislation. There is no point in having another House which can deal only with Bills sent up from here. We have seen some of the difficulties about that in recent months, and, indeed, they are with us now. So I can speak on behalf of the Opposition on this and say that the proposal is acceptable, fully understanding that it is not to be abused and that the safeguards are there and that they should be taken advantage of. I think, therefore, that there is no objection.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the new Standing Order and the Amendment to Standing Order No. 91 (Procedure upon bills whose main object is to create a charge upon the public revenue) hereinafter stated in the Schedule, be made.

Orders of the Day — SCHEDULE

Insert new Standing Order (Privilege (Bills brought from the Lords))

The House may proceed with any public bill brought from the Lords except a bill of aids and supplies provided that—

(a) it is so framed that no charge upon the people or upon public funds, unless it be such a charge as is defined in Standing Order No. 58 (Pecuniary penalties), is imposed or altered; and
(b) in the case of a bill which, if it were not so framed, would have as its main object the imposition or alteration of such a charge, a Minister of the Crown has informed the Clerk at the Table of his intention to take charge of it.

Standing Order No. 91 (Procedure upon bills whose main object is to create a charge upon the public revenue).

Line 14, at end add—

(2) The provisions of paragraph (1) of this Order shall apply to any bill brought from the Lords, of which a Minister of the Crown has informed the Clerks at the Table of his intention to take charge.

Orders of the Day — ELECTION OF SPEAKER

[Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified]

11.45 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department, Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Robert Carr): I beg to move,

That—

(1) Whenever it is necessary to proceed forthwith to the choice of a new Speaker in

consequence of Mr. Speaker having ceased for any reason to be a Member of this House, the Chair shall be taken by that Member, present in the House, and not being a Minister of the Crown, who has served for the longest period continuously as a Member of this House.
(2) Whenever it is necessary to proceed to the choice of a new Speaker in consequence of an intimation to Her Majesty by Mr. Speaker of his wish to relinquish that office, then Mr. Speaker shall continue to take the Chair and shall perform the duties and exercise the authority of Speaker until a new Speaker has been chosen, whereupon he shall leave the Chair and shall cease to perform those duties and to exercise that authority and Mr. Speaker Elect shall take the Chair accordingly:

Provided that if when this House proceeds to choose a new Speaker, the unavoidable absence of Mr. Speaker has been announced, Mr. Deputy Speaker shall forthwith leave the Chair and the Chair shall be taken in accordance with the provisions of paragraph (1) of this Order.
(3) A Member taking the Chair under the the provisions of paragraph (1) of this Order shall enjoy all those powers which may be exercised by Mr. Speaker during proceedings under paragraph (2) thereof.
 (4) When a Motion has been made, in accordance with the provisions of this Order, That a certain Member do take the Chair of this House as Speaker, a question shall be proposed on that Motion and the question on any further such Motion shall be put as an amendment thereto.

That this Order be a Standing Order of the House.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris: I suggest that it will be for the convenience of the House to consider at the same time the following Motion—"Procedure":
That whereas this House, in meeting to choose a Speaker, has heretofore proceeded in accordance with the ancient usages, it shall at every such meeting hereafter proceed in accordance with the Standing Orders, so far as they are applicable.
If that is agreeable, I have then to inform the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the first Amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English), in paragraph (1), after 'by', insert
'the Chairman of Ways and Means or, failing him, the other Deputy Speakers in order of seniority as such, or failing them, the members of the Chairman's panel in order of seniority as such or failing them'.
The remaining Amendments in the hon. Gentleman's name may be discussed at the same time, namely:
In paragraph (1), leave out 'continuously';
In paragraph (1), at end insert
'Any Member designated to take the Chair under this Order may refuse to do so but, if he accepts and takes the Chair, may not be nominated as Speaker';
In the proviso to paragraph (2), leave out 'Mr. Deputy Speaker shall forthwith leave the Chair and'.
I have also to inform the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) that Mr. Speaker has not selected the manuscript Amendment which he has submitted to him in connection with the Motion on Procedure.

Mr. R. J. Maxwell-Hyslop: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I take it that the taking of that order with the order dealing with the election of Speaker does not prejudice the right of the House, if it wishes, to divide on the second order, since it contains a material misstatement of fact and that course might be necessary.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is quite correct in that.

Mr. R. Carr: Once again, I find myself, as it were, the channel of communication between our Procedure Committee and the House. Perhaps it would at this point be right for me to say to our Procedure Committee, on behalf of the House—even though, alas, the House is rather thinly attended at the moment—that we greatly appreciate the work which it does in its attempts to help us to keep our procedures in tune with modern and often changing needs. We do not always agree with the Procedure Committee, but sometimes we do. We have just done so on the last matter, and I hope that that we shall do so on this also.
As the House will have noted, this Motion, though limited, is historic. The central figure in our parliamentary life is Mr. Speaker, and it is on the great tradition of the Speakership for impartiality and wise guidance that we as individual Members depend. The procedure for electing a Member to the Speakership is, therefore, of the utmost importance.
The existing procedures have successfully provided us with a long line of Speakers who have amply justified the

high trust which the House has placed in them. The House will agree, I know, that we ought not to tamper lightly with the procedures which have served us so well over so many years. Nevertheless, certain criticisms were raised on the procedures followed at the time of Mr. Speaker's election, as they had been on the occasion of the elections of Mr. Speaker Clifton-Brown and Mr. Speaker Morrison, for example.
These criticisms have been particularly about the alleged lack of consultation with back benchers. They gave rise to the inquiry by the Procedure Committee to see whether changes were called for, and it is on the recommendations of the Procedure Committee that the proposed new Standing Order is based.
It is fair to point out that on the principal issues which the Committee considered, it has, rightly I believe, confirmed existing long-standing practice, namely, in its rejection of any form of election by ballot, and in its confirmation—in paragraphs 26 and 27 of its report—of the present position with regard to the matter of qualifications for the Speakership. The Committee's view, and mine, is that any failings there may have been on previous occasions over consultation with hon. Members have not been procedural failings.
The right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), speaking as a senior back bencher, spoke for both Front Benches, and I hope for more than both Front Benches, when he told the Committee:
… you can always improve on consultation and you can do that by having more of it. There was not enough of it last time".
I think he spoke for a far greater number of hon. Members than himself in using those words on an all-party basis.
The one area in which the Committee recommended change, and which is the subject of the draft Standing Order, was that of the actual procedure on the Floor of the House when a new Speaker is elected. Criticism has focused on two aspects of the existing procedure. The first is that when the Clerk of the House acts under the present procedures as presiding officer on these occasions he would be powerless to deal with any points of order if they were raised, and he acts without any of the powers which normally buttress the occupant of the Chair.


The House is therefore, potentially at least, highly vulnerable at those times.
The second is that the present practice of not putting the Question if only one candidate for the Speakership is proposed is contrary to the normal procedures of the House, and leads to the undesirable situation that if a vote is desired, a second candidate must be put forward, possibly even without his consent, as happened on the last occasion.
To meet these two criticisms the Committee has made a number of procedural recommendations, summarised in paragraph 28 of its report. Its most significant proposal is perhaps that the Clerk of the House should no longer preside at the election of a new Speaker, and that, in future, either the retiring Speaker should do so, if his retirement takes place in the middle of a Session; or that, in other cases, the back bencher with the longest unbroken period of service who is at present in the House should do so.
The Committee further recommends that the Question should in future be put on the Motion for the election of a sole candidate for the Speakership; and that Motions for the election of all candidates subsequent to the first should be moved in the form of amendments to the original Motion, so that the way is kept open, if possible, for the unanimous election of the first, or another, candidate. In that way we can have our votes without any artificial troubles as we have had before, and also give ourselves the opportunity in the end, if it be the wish of the House, unanimously to confirm the final choice of the House in his occupancy of the Chair.
As I have previously indicated in a Written Reply to my right. Hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Sir Robin Turton), the Government have decided to recommend these proposals to the House, after careful thought about the recommendations.
I should perhaps qualify this on two points. First, as the House will have noted, the Standing Order would give the presiding senior back bencher simply all the powers of Mr. Speaker for this purpose, instead of specifying the particular Standing Orders concerned. On reflecting about the Committee's recommendations here, we thought that although the Committee was probably right in indicating

which Standing Orders should be put at the disposal of the hon. Member temporarily occupying the Chair, it might not be possible to foresee all circumstances, and that since he would occupy the Chair only for this limited purpose it was wiser, as the Motion proposes, that he should be given all the powers of Mr. Speaker while proceeding to act for this purpose of the selection of a new Speaker.
Secondly, where we depart from the Committee's recommendation is in respect of its recommendation (4). I am advised that legislation would be required if the Chairman of Ways and Means were to exercise a Speaker's authority in an interim between the death of a Speaker and the House proceeding to the election of his successor. I am not for one moment saying that we are opposed to that. What I am saying is that I am advised that this would be contrary to the provisions of present legislation and would require new legislation. If it were to be decided to introduce such legislation, I think it would be best to make any consequential amendment to Standing Orders at that time. As I have said, we have by no means ruled that out, but it seemed to us right to go as far we could to accept these recommendations now because it is not always easy to fit in legislation even if it were to be the general wish of the House so to do.
In recommending the Committee's proposals, while I have found its arguments persuasive in proposing that these occasions should no longer be presided over by the Clerk of the House, I would not wish, and I am sure the House would not wish me, to let the occasion go by without paying tribute on behalf of right hon. and hon. Members past and present to the way in which we have been served so long and successfully by the Clerks of the House in this matter, and it is of course no criticism of them or of the way any of them have carried out their duties on these occasions that we propose this change.
In his own evidence to the Committee, the present Clerk acknowledged the vulnerability of the House on these occasions and expressed wittily his ready acceptance of the change. He will, I am sure, nevertheless recognise, and perhaps relish, the fact that the proposed revival of the rôle of the senior back bencher in this matter


would represent a change to a still older tradition of the House. In bringing ourselves up to date, we are going back to a tradition even older than that which we are proposing to change.
In this, even more than in most other matters which fall to me as Leader of the House, I seek here the views of the House, and I do so in recommending to hon. Members the proposal of an all-party committee. It is surely unnecessary for me to stress that it is not a case of the Government asking the House to do something. It is but chance—convenience, perhaps—that I speak on this occasion from the Despatch Box. It is a House of Commons matter above all else. The Government happen to be in favour of the Committee's recommendations after careful consideration, and believe that the change proposed in the Standing Order would be in the interests of the House. But the Government's view is immaterial. It is above all a House of Commons matter and it is in that spirit that I commend the Motion.

12 midnight

Mr. Michael English: I beg to move, in paragraph 1(1), after 'by', insert:
'the Chairman of Ways and Means or, failing him, the other Deputy Speakers in order of seniority as such, or failing them, the members of the Chairmen's panel in order of seniority as such or failing them'.
I agree with the Leader of the House that the Select Committee on Procedure serves a useful purpose, but I do not think that we should laud it to the skies and assume that every single word it produces ought automatically to be approved by the House. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman in his usual courteous way explained that the Motion contained some alterations from the recommendations of the Committee.
What I protest slightly about is the fact that there are really two stages of procedure in altering procedures of the House. One of those stages, a very essential one, that has always been followed as far as possible by all Leaders of the House is to lay Motions of this type as early as possible upon the Order Paper so that possible Amendments can be considered and discussed. I gather that the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr.

Maxwell-Hyslop) has had time only to put down a manuscript Amendment to one of the Motions. In the case of my Amendments, the right hon. Gentleman, again with his usual courtesy, seized five minutes from a very busy day to discuss them with me, but this is not really a satisfactory state of affairs.
I ask the Leader of the House: what is the cause of this sudden, extraordinary hurry? It has not been customary to hurry over changes recommended by the Procedure Committee, but with this one a modest six months has elapsed and it appears upon the Order Paper. It would have been better if it had appeared upon the Paper a little earlier and we could have discussed some of the points in it, because I submit that some of the points in it are a total nonsense, not because of any fault of the Leader of the House, but because the Procedure Committee has not really considered or certainly not explained some of its recommendations.
When the Leader of the House says that an all-party committee has considered this and therefore we should agree, I should suggest that that is depriving this House of its legitimate rights. The function of a Select Committee is to hear evidence, to make it available to the House, to consider its recommendations and to make them available to the Leader of the House, who may then wish to adapt or alter them so that the whole House can consider the ultimate best results. I do not think the Committee's latest report is a perfect example of being totally nonpartisan. It may be all-party in the sense that members of the Labour and Conservative parties were represented but I see that on the last day of the sitting it shot off a little bolt on the Common Market which, coming from a Committee whose Chairman is a Conservative anti-Marketeer and the majority of whose Labour Members are in the minority of their party, is peculiar to say the least. In that respect at least, on the most controversial issue of the Session, the Committee is not at all representative.
The object of this Amendment is to say that the person taking the Chair should not be the senior back bencher. In the normal course of events one would assume that the senior back bencher is often the oldest, and I am not in any way referring to the present senior back


bencher in the House. In any case, we do not know, under this Motion, who would be likely to take the Chair.
Under the unamended Motion the person taking the Chair would simply be the senior back bencher present in the House. I have every confidence in the ability of the present Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Sir Robin Turton), to take the Chair. As the unhappy incident of his absence tonight shows—and I share the views of the Leader of the House and am glad to hear that he will soon be back with us—it may not be someone so competent.
I think it is fair to say that in their last Parliament some hon. and right hon. Members are perhaps, to put it delicately, past the best that they have hitherto exhibited, due to age and infirmity. It may simply be an elderly and senior Member whose competence to take the Chair would not be as great as that of the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton. Because it is the senior back bencher present in the House, I would suggest that the first people to be considered as possibilities for this small but important task of chairing the House when the Speaker is elected should be yourself, Sir Robert, or your colleagues, the Deputy Speakers, in order of seniority, and the members of the Chairmen's Panel, in order of seniority. Then, if none of these was available, we could run through the House in order of seniority, as the present, unamended Motion proposes.
It could be argued, although it is not argued by the Committee, that the reason for excluding yourself and other Deputy Speakers is that they are possible candidates for the Speakership. It could so be argued, but it was not argued by the Procedure Committee and I suggest there is a very good reason why it was not argued—and that is that the Committee's recommendation does not exclude the person in the Chair being nominated as Speaker at the election he is conducting.
It is clear why the Committee did not say why it was not recommending that the Chairman of Ways and Means or other Members of the House used to taking the Chair should not do so. I am sorry to correct the Leader of the House slightly. The Committee did not even recommend that it should be the senior Member of the House taking the Chair.

It recommended that it should be the senior Member of the House with unbroken service.
I fail totally to understand that. We all know that hon. Members can lose seats that they have held for years. In fact, three or four of the most senior Members of the House lost their seats at the last election. We all know that boundaries can be changed every 15 years or so. A Member may have been in the House for 40 years or longer. I believe that the present Father of the House has been here for 50 years. Suppose that a Member had been in the House for 50 years but at one point was out of it for six months, so that he had been in the House for only 49½ years. He could not under this Motion take the Chair because he had lost his seat at an election but had come back at a subsequent by-election. This is an absolute nonsense. I fail to see why the word "continuously" should be in the Motion, and that is the object of my second Amendment.
We all know of people who have returned to this House after an absence and have become Ministers of the Crown because of their experience of the House. We automatically accept this practice, in the case of a person who returns after losing his seat, because we know that he is an experienced Member. Yet the net effect of the Procedure Committee's recommendation—and it is a little unfortunate that the present Father of the House is the Chairman of the Procedure Committee—is that its Chairman takes the Chair when the Speaker is elected.
I come to my third Amendment, in paragraph (1), at the end to insert:
'Any Member designated to take the Chair under this Order may refuse to do so but, if he accepts and takes the Chair, may not be nominated as Speaker'.
One could argue about who should take the Chair to preside over the election of Speaker, but the real nonsense of this recommendation is that the person in the Chair can be nominated as Speaker. That is where it is totally wrong. It does not alter the ancient practice of the House whereby a person who is nominated as Speaker may not refuse. As we all know from the historic ceremony, when a Member is pulled towards the Chair, the person elected as Speaker cannot refuse the office. It therefore follows that a person cannot refuse to be nominated. If


he could refuse to do that, he could refuse to be elected, which he cannot do.
There is always the odd Member who might wish to do that for reasons of publicity. A Member might nominate the person in the Chair as one of the candidates. There would then be an election and the person in the Chair would be in the extraordinary position of presiding over his own election or defeat. I say that advisedly because the Motion is quite mandatory. The person to take the Chair at the election of the Speaker shall be the senior Member present in the House. Obviously, the person actually in the Chair at the time that he is nominated must be present in the House and cannot get out of it. He could not say, "Somebody else can take the Chair", because the Motion does not allow that. The only way to get out of such an awkward situation would be for somebody on the Government Front Bench or elsewhere to move the Adjournment of the House in the middle of the election so that the person in the Chair could get out and somebody else could take over—and the person in the Chair could get out only by not being present in the House.
So—who knows?—one day the senior Member in the House might be a candidate for the Speakership, if older and infirmer Members were not present, and the person thus nominated might not even be in the House when elected, because he had left in order not to be in the Chair and preside over his own election. We would then have the extraordinary situation in which it would be impossible to follow the traditional custom of the person elected being taken to the Chair, because he would be out of the House as a result of his not being allowed in without being in the Chair. That seems to me to be a piece of idiocy.
The last Amendment is technical. The effect of the Motion as presently worded is that the Father of the House—defined as the one with the longest unbroken service, who happens at present to be the Chairman of the Committee that considered the recommendation—shall take the Chair and may be capable of being nominated as Speaker. I suggest that, whoever takes the Chair, that should not be the case. I sincerely hope that if the Government wish to press the Motion in

its present form tonight, in the new Session they will put down a modest Amendment designed to ensure that this sort of conflict of interests does not arise.

12.12 a.m.

Mr. R. J. Maxwell-Hyslop: The Report of the Select Committee on Procedure emphasises that its major recommendations—which the prime Motion tonight in the name of the Leader of the House executes—are not innovations. It says that it is returning to the ancient usages of the House. More precisely, if we look at the top of page xi of the report we read:
The Clerk of the House explained that the 'modern rule' was that 'when a candidate is unopposed, no question is proposed and there is no opportunity for argument or dissent leading to a division'. This rule was criticised by Mr. Gaitskell during the election of Sir Harry Hylton-Foster in 1959".
and so on.
The first major change proposed is to abandon what is admittedly a modern rule in favour of what was the ancient usage. The second major change proposed is that instead of having a mute Clerk in the Chair there should be an articulate Member of the House, armed with the normal powers of the Chair in the conduct of debate. That, again, is returning to the ancient usage of the House. It is not an innovation.
Paragraph 21, on page xiii of the report, contains the statement by the Select Committee that
For a Member to preside at the election of the Speaker would therefore represent a return to an ancient practice of the House.
That is relevant, because somebody very unwisely—and it is not difficult to guess who—wrote the reverse of the true statement of the position in relation to the procedure Motion which appears in my right hon. Friend's name on the Order Paper. The Motion provides
That whereas this House, in meeting to choose a Speaker has heretofore proceeded in accordance with the ancient usages, it shall at every such meeting hereafter proceed in accordance with the Standing Orders, so far as they are applicable.
That is manifestly not a statement of fact. As the Select Committee has accurately declared, the House has been proceeding in accordance with not the ancient usages but some corrupt practices which crept into its usages after 1700, because as


late as 1700 the question was put without an alternative candidate being nominated.
Therefore, we cannot accept and write into the Journal of the House what everyone here knows or should know to be an untrue statement of fact. I believe that the truth is that Sir Barnett Cocks gave erroneous advice to both Front Benches before the debate on the election of the Speaker on 12th January, 1971. He had had drawn to his attention the precedents, which showed that the advice which he had given was erroneous. I know that that is so because I drew it to his attention and showed him the photostats of the Journal. We are in the unhappy position that the Clerk who gives bad advice to the Chair is also the editor of Erskine May. We have a circular situation in which bad advice can be enshrined in Erskine May as a precedent by the same person who gave the bad advice and then quoted subsequently as an authority to the House.
I mention this matter because it is a dangerous practice against which we need to be on our guard. Having established beyond a peradventure—the evidence appears in the Select Committee's Report—that the major practices to which we are returning are ancient usages and that the more recent habits are literally modern innovation, it would be quite wrong for us to cover up the initial errors of advice offered to the Front Benches by this rather comfortable but inaccurate Motion which claims that heretofore we proceeded in accordance with ancient usages when we did no such thing.
It is commendable that the Select Committee has rejected both the major proposals of the Clerk of the House and has accepted that we need to return to the much better earlier practices of the House. The recommendations of the Clerk appear in paragraph 27 on page 19 of the Select Committee's Report, where he states:
It is therefore suggested that in future the Clerk of the House, who presides during the election of a Speaker, should be given authority first to propose the question and then to accept a Motion 'That the debate be now adjourned'…".
That was pretty bad advice to give the Select Committee. Why it should be sensible to debate a motion "That the debate be now adjourned" rather than the Motion that another Member do take

the Chair as Speaker was never made clear.
The proper procedure of this House as laid down in Erskine May and elsewhere is that when a Motion is moved it is debated and the debate is terminated by putting the Question. There is no more reason why this should not be done when electing the Speaker than in the case of any other business. The Select Committee has very wisely recommended that the normal practice of the House—namely, to determine a Motion by putting the Question—should be adhered to and that if there are Amendments to the Motion the Question should be put on those Amendments before it is put on the main Question, which is the normal procedure of the House, rather than adopting the absurd and recondite suggestions put forward by Sir Barnett Cocks. Manifestly it was not his good day.
Therefore, I commend to the House the main propositions put forward by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, although not the procedure Motion, which I ask him to withdraw. You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, alluded to a manuscript Amendment which I offered the Chair which would have corrected the error of fact in the procedure Motion. As that Amendment has not been selected by Mr. Speaker, it will be necessary for the Motion to be withdrawn and resubmitted to the House in a corrected form. I trust that my right hon. Friend will not wish to abuse the House by having written into the Journal such a clear mis-statement of fact.
Turning to the Amendment moved, I thought, moderately and reasonably by the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English), I have no strong feelings about whether or not the Father of the House, as it were, should be determined in terms of continuous service to the House. Were it the tradition that the Father of the House should be the hon. Member with the maximum extent of service to the House whether or not broken, I would not disagree for a moment, but as long as we retain the tradition that the Father of the House is the hon. Member with the longest period of continuous service it is convenient rather than highly meritorious that the same easily identifiable person should take the Chair under these proposals.
What is not clear to me are the two propositions put forward by the hon. Gentleman. First of all, why is it that the occupant of the Chair at the time when the election of the Speaker takes place should be able to move out of the Chair only on a Motion for the adjournment? You, this evening, Mr. Deputy Speaker, moved in and out of the Chair without any Motion for the adjournment coming before the House. There is no procedural reason why it should be necessary to adjourn the House.

Mr. English: There would normally be no reason: it has just been written into the Motion. In this Motion, the person taking the Chair must be the senior Member present in the House. Once he is in the Chair he is the senior Member present in the House, and no one else can take the Chair because he is the senior Member present in the House.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: I take that point, which goes more than half-way to answering my question.
But my second point is that I see no basic objection to the Father of the House, who happens to be in the Chair, being one of the candidates for election as Speaker. I must say that on the basis of probabilities, for the very reason given by the hon. Gentleman himself, I think it highly unlikely that the House would wish to elect its Father as Speaker, just because the peak of his mental agility is likely to be passed, to put it kindly. After the eulogy paid by my right hon. Friend to all the Speakers, apparently, in living memory, all I can say is that I think that his charity and kindness, characteristics which endear him in all corners of the House, have possibly overcome the powers of his memory, a point which it might be indelicate to elaborate at any greater length since no very considerable powers of memory would be needed to dispute it.
But, unlikely as it is that the Father of the House would be a serious candidate for the Speakership, on the contrary I should have thought it quite likely that the Chairman of Ways and Means, the Deputy Speaker, would in many circumstances be a serious candidate for the Speakership. Therefore, if what we want to avoid is the occupant of the Chair

being one of the serious candidates for the Speakership, surely the Deputy Speaker and the Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means are those whom we would least want to see in the Chair for that particular occasion. I say that with the reservation that someone who is worthy of occupying the Chair as Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means or as Chairman of Ways and Means is perfectly competent to preside fairly over the election of a Speaker even if he happens to be one of the candidates. If that is not so, it is a very unhappy day for the House of Commons.
So, on those arguments and balancing the Amendments against the substantive Motion, the Amendments do not commend themselves to me.
I should therefore feel inclined to support the unamended procedure Motion, but to represent as strongly as I can that my right hon. Friend should save the House from the inconvenience of having to divide on the procedure Motion to prevent this violence being done to truth by recognising that it contains a misstatement of fact, which was identified by the Select Committee in its report, and to retable it tomorrow when I have not the slightest doubt it would go through without further debate since we have had the occasion of debating it tonight.

12.25 a.m.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: I should say two things at the outset. First, we all share the regret of the Leader of the House at the absence of the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Sir Robin Turton). We hope that there is nothing seriously wrong and that the right hon. Gentleman will be with us again shortly. We regret it the more because I am sure he would have wished to tell the House about the report of the Select Committee of which he is Chairman. We are therefore without the advice which he would have given us about the reasons for the conclusions reached by the Select Committee.
Secondly, we sincerely hope that it will not be necessary to invoke the new Standing Orders for the election of a new Speaker in the foreseeable future. Some of my hon. Friends said "Why stick this matter on the Order Paper very late at night on the day before we are to rise for the Summer Recess?" I suppose the


answer is that Speakers are mortal and that these things can happen. We profoundly hope that they will not. But when we have recommendations from a Select Committee about changing the procedure it is desirable not to delay too long in making the changes.
I tried to follow the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) in his criticism of the procedure Motion. I think he was suggesting that if it were amended to read,
'has heretofore proceeded more or less in accordance with the ancient usages",
it would meet his point. It was the literal wording of the Motion which seemed to offend the hon. Gentleman's sense of history in the matter.
In general, I have no great patience with the ancient usages of the House. I think we should have a good look at some of them and discard quite a lot. We are asking everybody else in Britain to be with it, except our own House of Commons. It is about time that we stripped it of a great deal of the ancient usages. Nevertheless, I am sure that much is well tried in our parliamentary institutions. There is nothing like coming into the House of Commons for taming the most militant and radical spirit. It absorbs us into its sense of history and traditions. To some extent, that is one of the disadvantages of coming here. We lose our revolutionary impetus and radical instincts to get rid of all that rubbish and routine and the ancient usages. We find ourselves falling under the spell of the ancient usages of the House of Commons, and here we are, late at night, either defending them or very reluctant to change them.
Refreshing my memory of the proceedings of the Select Committee, I find that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) and myself gave some very wise evidence. In answer to question 152 of the published evidence, I expressed the view that the Deputy Speaker should preside on the occasions when it was necessary to elect a new Speaker. When the question was raised earlier whether this might be an embarrassment as he might be a candidate, I said that would not really matter. I think the Select Committee was probably right to recommend that the Deputy Speaker should not take the Chair in those circumstances and to relieve all occupants of the Chair from the duty on such an

occasion so that their own candidature should be absolutely uninhibited if they wished to be considered for election. I think, on balance, that the committee's recommendation is right.
When the House refers these difficult matters to Select Committees, we have a certain obligation to accept the Committee's recommendations unless there are very compelling reasons against doing so. When Select Committees are asked to sit, and when right hon. and hon. Members are asked to give evidence and they ponder over these matters and come to unanimous conclusions—and I ask right hon. and hon. Members to look at the proceedings of this Committee to see how unanimous they were—unless we feel that they have gone seriously wrong then, whatever our own judgment, in matters of this kind we should accept the Committee's judgment.

Mr. English: There was no division in the Committee, but the draft report was several times amended. As requested by my right hon. Friend, I have looked at the proceedings, and I see that the Committee was not exactly unanimous in the sense that we normally use the phrase "on the nod".
With regard to my right hon. Friend's more substantive point, I agree that this may have been the reason for the Committee phrasing its report as it did. It may have meant that the Deputy Speaker may be a candidate for the Speakership, but it does not say that that is why it recommended this. It does not say why it should be someone with unbroken service, as distinct from the senior back bencher. Finally, it does not exclude the person in the Chair from being a candidate which, according to my right hon. Friend, is the reason for leaving the Deputy Speaker out of it.

Mr. Houghton: I accept what my hon. Friend says, that it was not unanimous in the sense that right from the outset everyone was in agreement, but we have recently had a report from the Select Committee on Privileges which is now a quite sincerely unanimous report but it did not start as that. We have to take the report as we get it and, looking at the proceedings, there seems to have been no serious disagreement as far as I can tell.
I still believe that Select Committees which make recommendations to the


House are entitled to the fullest respect of the House unless there are strong reasons why we should set aside their recommendations. It is a very good rule; otherwise there will be a disinclination to serve on Select Committees. I fire a shot across somebody's bows in this connection in relation to the appointment of a Speaker's Conference. The Speaker's Conference sits and chews over these things at great length. If it ponders deeply over them and makes recommendations only to find that for political reasons its recommendations are not accepted, it will be a great discouragement to those of us who perform these arduous duties.
It is true that the Committee has not given reasons for its recommendations, but it is pretty obvious that what it had in mind was that the Chair should be taken by a back bencher, and it should be taken by the back bencher with the longest continuous service. As the hon. Member for Tiverton said, one thing that is needed in this matter is to be able to identify the person who is going to take the Chair. If one takes into account broken periods of service, there may be a good deal of disputation and looking up of calendars to find out who really has the longest service. If one takes the longest period of continuous service there cannot be much doubt about it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) referred to some of the difficulties that might occur in connection with the back bencher with the longest continuous service in the House. It is conceivable that he might be gaga and that he would be unsuitable to take the Chair. In those circumstances it would be the duty of some right hon. and hon. Gentlemen to keep him in the Smoke Room and make sure that he was not present in the Chamber. We would not mind him being somewhere else. All we have to do then is to select the Member with the longest continuous service who is present in the House. Surely that can be fixed. After all, Whips fix most things and could surely fix that. I do not think that any difficulty will arise in that connection.
On the whole, therefore, we should support the Select Committee and hope

that we shall not have to go through this experience in the near future. We have had only 11 Speakers in the last 100 years. That is a splendid record of service in the Chair. Only infrequently is the House troubled with the problem of electing a new Speaker.
I conclude by reference to the main matters which went to the Select Committee which are not before us now. It was not this particular aspect of the election of the Speaker that caused the House to refer this matter to the Select Committee. It was a matter of deeper significance and greater substance than the purely procedural matters, although many of us felt that it was time, with great respect to the Clerk of the House, to relieve the Clerk of the task of fixing some hon. Member with a steely stare, pointing a finger at him and, in sepulchral tones, calling upon him to do something. No one knew quite what it was, but he was called upon to do something. Under the recommendations of the Select Committee all that will be dispensed with. I am sure that no one will be better pleased about this than the Clerk of the House.
But the deeper matters that went to the Select Committee were consultation, secret ballot and other means of electing the new Speaker. The hon. Member for Tiverton is an authority on the surprising thing in these matters. He nominated my right hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Sir G. de Freitas) as a candidate for Speaker without his prior knowledge or consent. My right hon. Friend rose in his place in a very embarrassed condition. He said that he knew nothing about it and did not want it, and he asked whether he might have the leave of the House to decline this great honour. But apparently the House said "No. You have been nominated, brother, and stand you will have to." This all seemed to be an absolute farce. I suppose that we were grateful to the hon. Member for revealing some of the farcical aspects of the ancient usages of the House.
However, the idea of a secret ballot appealed to no one when it came to looking at it very closely. As for consultation, the Leader of the House did me the honour of quoting from my evidence, and there is nothing more to be said about it. The remedy for lack of consultation is to have more of it. There


are plenty of opportunities and facilities for having it. The secret ballot was certainly not a solution to this difficult matter.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Just for the record, it did not show the ridiculous nature of the ancient usages of the House, which were that the House divided on the question, that one of these Members take the Chair. It showed the ridiculous nature of the subsequent corrupt procedures which had crept in.

Mr. Houghton: I fully understand that the hon. Gentleman has referred to the ancient usages of the House in quite a comprehensive way. There were aspects of the matter last time which we realise were unsatisfactory and in conflict with what had been done previously.
However, the hour is late and I am sure that the House will not lightly set aside the recommendations of the Select Committee, notwithstanding the persuasive way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West propounded his Amendments. I sincerely hope that we regard this as the most satisfactory report that we have and adopt it and see how we go next time.

Mr. R. Carr: The hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) asked: why the hurry? I am glad that the hon. Gentleman thinks a delay of six months is hurrying. I take that as a compliment. That leads me to reiterate what the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) said: there is no hurry because we expect or want to have to use these procedures. Indeed, I reinforce what the right hon. Gentleman said and express the sincere hope that it will be many years before we have any need to use them.
However, having said that, such an exciting picture has been painted of what might happen under the new procedures that I hope that, although we all hope that it will be a long time before we shall have to use them, I shall be here to see them in operation. I further hope that I shall not be the oldest Member who is gaga and who must be detained in the Smoking Room. It strikes me, when I think back to the stormy days of the Industrial Relations Bill, that we might

have problems of peaceful picketing even in this ancient Chamber.
The right hon. Member, on the brink of a holiday, is far from tired and jaded. When he attacked our ancient usages, he showed the youthful energy of radical reform which he told us earlier he inherited from his family tradition.
I come to the question of ancient usage and the problems of my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop). I had thought of this ancient usage in the Motion in a rather different sense. I had thought of the ancient usage as being the fact that hitherto we had followed custom and practice, whereas from now onwards we are to follow the written rule in our Standing Orders. I thought that that was a change. Indeed, in my opening speech I said that some of the procedures we were now recommending were more ancient than those we were replacing and that the real change was that we were moving from a tradition to having a rule about it and, in the future, following Standing Orders.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton will not oppose the Motion, because I know that he is one of those who believe that it is right that we should get this change properly affirmed by the House. If the Motion is agreed to tonight, I cannot give any undertaking to table another Motion in due course, but I certainly will not rule it out. I will willingly talk to my hon. Friend about it if he would care to do so. If I could, after certain soundings, agree on a more agreeable form of words in a few months' time, I would certainly not rule out tabling a Motion. I hope that we can complete the process tonight so that we have a proper new procedure for dealing with this, although we have no expectation of having to use it.
I come to the Amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Nottingham, West. I agree very much with the right hon. Member for Sowerby that, although we should not follow the recommendations of an all-party Select Committee slavishly, nevertheless we should not depart from such recommendations unless there is good reason for doing so. It is true that the Motion departs from the recommendation in two respects, for reasons which I explained earlier. I believe that there


are good reasons for departing from the recommendations in these respects.
I do not wish to argue strongly against the Amendments. They are perfectly legitimate alternative views. I hope, however, that on the whole the House will stick to the proposals of our Procedure Committee. By his first Amendment, the hon. Member wants the Chair to be taken by the Chairman of Ways and Means and then, in descending order of precedence, by the other Deputy Speakers and the Panel of Chairmen. That would be a logical way of doing it. I agree that the Select Committee did not argue closely why it recommended against that, but it did recommend against it. I think that one of the reasons, although the Committee did not obviously adduce it, for not wanting to accept the hon. Member's proposal is that, as one sees in looking back over the history of the House, it would be a disadvantage that the Chairman referred to might well be among those who were most likely candidates for the Speakership. That might be a reason for preferring the Select Committee's proposals.
The hon. Member's next Amendment relates to the use of the word "continuously". This, I suppose, is a bit of the ancient usage which sometimes we would like to throw out, but here again I was not privy to the Committee's deliberations. Perhaps it is part of the wisdom of the House that although Select Committees normally publish the evidence they receive, they do not publish a transcript of their deliberations. This was the Committee's recommendation, however. No doubt it felt that this was the way in which the Father of the House was chosen and perhaps this would be the best way to define the Member with the longest service for this purpose. On the whole, I think we should stick to it.
I recognise that there might be a point in the hon. Member's third Amendment when he wishes to say that the person who takes the Chair cannot be nominated because he has accepted the Chair. I recognise that it could be embarrassing for the Member in the Chair to be nominated. On the whole, however, one cannot legislate in advance for every hypothetical circumstance. I imagine that what would have to be done in those

circumstances would be to adjourn the House.
I could not, however, advise the House to accept that Amendment because, although it would be unlikely, it could happen that if we were ever to reach a deadlocked position the Member who had agreed to take the Chair might be the person whom, in the end, the House wished to choose. That might seem unlikely but it is possible. Under the hon. Member's Amendment, not only would that Member be the very person who would be debarred but the rest of us would be debarred from considering him.
Therefore, although not because the hon. Member's proposed Amendments are patently bad or can be argued against on strong logical grounds, I think that on the whole I would prefer the House to rest on the proposals of the Select Committee which were deliberated upon and, as far as we know, were genuinely supported by all the Members of the Committee. I hope, therefore, that the House will accept the Motion unamended.

Amendment negatived.

Main Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That—

(1) Whenever it is necessary to proceed forthwith to the choice of a new Speaker in consequence of Mr. Speaker having ceased for any reason to be a Member of this House, the Chair shall be taken by that Member, present in the House, and not being a Minister of the Crown, who has served for the longest period continuously as a Member of this House.
(2) Whenever it is necessary to proceed to the choice of a new Speaker in consequence of an intimation to Her Majesty by Mr. Speaker of his wish to relinquish that office, then Mr. Speaker shall continue to take the Chair and shall perform the duties and exercise the authority of Speaker until a new Speaker has been chosen, whereupon he shall leave the Chair and shall cease to perform those duties and to exercise that authority and Mr. Speaker Elect shall take the Chair accordingly:

Provided that if when this House proceeds to choose a new Speaker, the unavoidable absence of Mr. Speaker has been announced, Mr. Deputy Speaker shall forthwith leave the Chair and the Chair shall be taken in accordance with the provisions of paragraph (1) of this Order.

(3) A Member taking the Chair under the the provisions of paragraph (1) of this Order shall enjoy all those powers which may be


exercised by Mr. Speaker during proceedings under paragraph (2) thereof.
(4) When a Motion has been made, in accordance with the provisions of this Order, That a certain Member do take the Chair of this House as Speaker, a question shall be proposed on that Motion and the question on any further such Motion shall be put as an amendment thereto.

That this Order be a Standing Order of the House.

Resolved,
That whereas this House, in meeting to choose a Speaker, has heretofore proceeded in accordance with the ancient usages, it shall at every such meeting hereafter proceed in accordance with the Standing Orders, so far as they are applicable.—[Mr. R. Carr.]

Orders of the Day — CHURCH OF ENGLAND MEASURES

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the Deaconesses and Lay Ministry Measure 1972, passed by the General Synod of the Church of England, be presented to Her Majesty for Her Royal Assent in the form in which the said Measure was laid before Parliament.—[Mr. Worsley.]

12.50 a.m.

Mr. Michael English: At this hour I do not wish to detain the House but I cannot let this Motion pass without making one small but important point.
We make a great deal of play about discrimination against women. Hon. Members have introduced Bills in this House or into the Lords on the subject. I recognise that this Measure is worthy of support, and I do not oppose it, because it modestly increases the powers of deacons and deaconesses. But none of us should forget, and I hope the General Synod of the Church of England will take note of the fact, that one of the principal places in the United Kingdom where there is discrimination against women, completely and by law, is in the Church of England. I do not believe that such discrimination can ultimately prevail for ever.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Clergy Pensions (Amendment) Measure 1972, passed by the General Synod of the Church of England, be presented to Her Majesty for Her Royal Assent in the form in which the said Measure was laid before Parliament.—[Mr. Worsley.]

Orders of the Day — NATIONAL DEBT BILL [Lords]

Considered in Committee; reported, without Amendment; read the Third time and passed, without Amendment.

Orders of the Day — POISONS BILL [Lords]

Considered in Committee; reported, without Amendment; read the Third time and passed, without Amendment.

Orders of the Day — ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Rossi.]

Orders of the Day — CHRONIC RENAL FAILURE (HOME DIALYSIS)

12.55 a.m.

Mr. Christopher Woodhouse: I have sought this brief debate to raise a particular case of hardship in my constituency, which also illustrates a general principle affecting other sectors of the National Health Service. I emphasise at the outset that I make no criticism of the hospital concerned, whose staff have been admirably helpful. Nor do I make any criticism of the regional hospital board, which has been as generous as it can be within the regulations. Nor, certainly, do I make any criticism of the Minister's Department. Indeed, I would much rather see a Treasury Minister here to answer the debate, because it is essentially a matter of finance that I wish to raise.
The case concerns Mr. N. R. Jones, who lives on the Cutteslowe Estate in Oxford. His daughter, who will be 19 this month, suffers from a chronic renal disorder which necessitates haemodialysis treatment. Originally, from May last year, she was treated three days a week, which is the normal type of treatment, for 15 hours at a time in the Churchill Hospital in Oxford. Now, she is having the same treatment at home, at present on only two days a week, for medical reasons, but this may possibly have to be increased again to three times a week in certain circumstances.
The regional hospital board has provided all the technical facilities for this


treatment at home. It has built a special bedroom detached from the house, which I have seen. It has installed all the apparatus necessary, and has trained Mr. and Mrs. Jones and their daughter to use it. All of this is not in the slightest degree a matter for complaint. Indeed, it is beyond all praise. I believe that there are few countries in the world where such home treatment would be possible. A specialist whom I have consulted tells me that the United Kingdom certainly leads Europe, and probably the whole world, in the practice of home treatment for kidney patients, and this is a matter for congratulation.
The hardship arises only in the matter of cost. It is obviously impossible to put any price on the time and skill of the parents; nor would they want it. The fact is, however, that they are providing substantial relief to the National Health Service. The father is replacing some of the time of nurses, a little of the time of doctors, and some of the time of administrators and technicians, to the extent of about 50 hours a week. The mother takes care of the diet of her daughter and the laundry and cleaning which would otherwise fall to the responsibility of the hospital staff. Neither parent can ever go away for a holiday, not even for a single day. This is simply matter for the record, not by way of complaint.
What is unreasonable, however, is the additional cost falling on the family which would otherwise fall on the National Health Service. There are several items, but the largest and most important is the constantly rising cost of electricity. Here are some figures to illustrate this. The girl at present receives £7·65 a week. It will go up to £9 in October. That figure combines her sickness benefit and social security. It is certainly not in itself an ungenerous sum. She does not qualify for the constant attendance allowance because she needs only intermittent attention a few days a week.
Additionally, the family receives an allowance for electricity amounting to £6 a quarter, which has just gone up by 5 per cent. to meet the rising cost of electricity, plus a further 50p a week in the winter. This is supposed to cover the extra cost of operating the machine,

and no doubt it does, but there is far more to the treatment than just the operation of the machine. I leave out of account certain unavoidable incidentals like the cost of a telephone and transport from time to time to and from the hospital.
The additional items which impose a load on the electricity bill are these: the process of water softening, which occupies 60 minutes a week; the process of rebuilding the artificial kidney, which also occupies 60 minutes a week; the separate laundering of the bed linen, which takes 120 minutes a week; the process of sterilising the instruments and utensils in boiling water, which takes another 120 minutes a week. Above all, there is the heating throughout the operation of the machine, which varies from 30 to 50 hours a week. This heating is necessary not only for the patient's comfort, but also for the maintenance of the machine in good order, because if the room temperature falls below a certain level the machine will break down.
I think that it is clear that all these items must add up to a formidable extra use of electricity, which is an indispensable part of the treatment, but for which no allowance is made unless the family is so badly off to be able to claim supplementary benefit. The actual cost can be worked out very roughly from a comparison which I have made between the family's electricity bill before and after the treatment began. For a six-month period at the beginning of 1971 the bill was about £28. For a similar period at the beginning of 1972 it was £70. The treatment began in October, 1971. Apart from the increased price, the difference of £42 is wholly attributable to the treatment, and towards this difference it can be calculated from the figures I have already given, that the family received less than £20—in other words, less than half the extra cost.
It is immaterial to my argument—it is not, of course, immaterial to the family—whether it can afford that extra cost. It is immaterial, because the difference in costs represents a direct relief to the Health Srvice, whether or not it is within the means of the family. I mention its financial position without prejudice to that principle, that in fact the Health Service is being relieved at its expense. In fact, it would be wrong to pretend that


its financial situation is desperate, though that might very well not be true in other cases of the same kind. Until recently, the daughter was able to earn a small sum from a part-time job. Her mother is in employment, and the father had a good job as a building foreman, so there was no question of claiming supplementary benefit. But now the daughter is unable to work at all, and the father recently lost his job owing to the difficulty he had in time-keeping, which in the circumstances is very understandable. I was not surprised to get a letter from him last month, from which I should like to quote. He wrote:
With an illness like this one must get married to it. My daughter and I are very much a close-knit team. One cannot approach it in a matter of fact way, you have to be vigilant at all times; you cannot afford to relax. After all you have a person's life in your hands. In this respect my daughter's life is more precious to me than all the positions in my life, so I do not think I will bother to look for another job, for the same thing to happen again. Since I am saving the State money by nursing my daughter I don't see why they should not keep me.
I am glad to see that he thought better of it and got a new job, but he feels, and I agree, that it is wrong that such a heavy cost should fall on him for relieving the National Health Service.
This is not an isolated case. There are probably others worse off, especially in cases where the patient is himself the family breadwinner. One may well ask how widespread cases of this kind are. I understand that the incidence of kidney disease requiring treatment varies in different parts of the country, from under 20 per million of population a year to over 40 per million, the chief difference depending on the age limit adopted, whether it is set at 45 or 55. In the Oxford area, the figure is, I am told, 14 per million per annum, which implies that fairly strict criteria are applied.
But what is agreed by all the specialists is that home treatment is the best course. It is medically best, because the mortality rate is less; it is socially best for the patient; it is cheapest for the National Health Service; and it allows treatment on the largest possible scale in economy of use of machines and beds.
In the Oxford region, for example, 80 patients are now on home treatment. The Churchill Hospital has only six beds available for such treatment which by

doubling up can be used to provide for 12 patients. The aim of the Churchill Hospital is therefore to use hospital treatment only to train patients and their attendants so that they can provide subsequent treatment at home. With many more patients awaiting treatment, that is clearly the best and most desirable course.
No one expects to make a profit out of doing so, but equally it is clearly wrong that a family's standard of living should actually be depressed as a result of relieving the NHS in this way. One fairly simple remedy suggests itself in this case, which would be to install a separate meter in the treatment room and make all the sums on that meter a charge on the NHS. But this would still leave some unavoidable costs uncovered, to which I have referred—for instance, occasional transport and a telephone.
Another possibility would be to enlarge the scope of the constant attendance allowance, which would cover such costs as transport and telephone, but I think that would be unsatisfactory and open to dispute in other ways. I do not wish to dogmatise on the remedy. I am sure my hon. Friend will look at this problem sympathetically.
I conclude with one more general observation. Answering a parliamentary Question on this subject on 13th June, my hon. Friend affirmed the excellent principle that
… we want people to be treated at home as far as possible."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th June, 1972; Vol. 838, c. 1245.]
Home treatment is undoubtedly preferable in this and other cases, as my hon. Friend also said then. I am sure this is not the only case under the NHS in which what is possible could, with a little carefully calculated generosity, be pushed a good deal further.

1.10 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Michael Alison): I have listened with great care to what my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford (Mr. Woodhouse) said and perhaps I could begin by expressing my appreciation for the courteous and most helpful way in which he furnished me in advance with considerable details of what he intended to say. Before dealing with the particular case he has raised I should


like to say something about dialysis provision generally since it is important that these matters should be seen in perspective.
As my hon. Friend knows, chronic renal failure is inevitably fatal if untreated. In the past thousands of people have died—some at quite early ages—because no form of treatment was available. It is only within the last decade that the situation has changed—to be precise since 1965—when results of research work in America showed that maintenance dialysis was possible for the treatment of the terminal renal failure and would allow a return to reasonable health in selected patients. In the light of this development my Department called a conference of doctors under the chairmanship of Lord Rosenheim. This conference concluded that intermittent dialysis for chronic renal failure was an established and effective form of treatment which should be developed in this country as rapidly as was compatible with proper training and a high standard of patient care. A working party of medical experts was then set up to advise on clinical policy and the development of equipment. This working party recommend as an initial aim the establishment of 10 to 20 main centres in England and Wales each having at least 10 beds capable of maintaining 25 to 30 patients on twice-weekly dialysis, where staff would be trained and research carried out.
The problems associated with setting up this new service in hospital were considerable. The service is expensive—the cost of a machine alone is about £2,000, to which must be added the cost of building and engineering works required. The annual maintenance per patient is up to £2,500. There is the problem of finding enough qualified and trained staff to do the job. Haemodialysis is a highly complex type of treatment and each patient requires support from a skilled team of doctors, nurses and technicians. There is also the problem of infection including the risk of hepatitis which affects not only the patients themselves but also the staff coming into contact with them.
Nevertheless, despite these difficulties there are today no less than 39 units in operation in hospitals in England and Wales, and the latest available figures show that 526 patients are being maintained

on dialysis in these units. But we have not stopped there. As the techniques of haemodialysis were developed, the equipment became more self-contained with built-in fail-safe mechanisms and it was possible for patients to be trained to carry out the procedure, largely on their own, and with little in the way of skilled assistance.
A pilot trial was carried out which proved successful and the working party advising the Department on the treatment of chronic renal failure recommended that this was the treatment of choice for increasing the number of patients on regular haemodialysis. Steps were taken to provide facilities under the National Health Service with such success that there are now about 750 patients on home dialysis in England and Wales. I need hardly say that it is in the interests of patients to be at home as my hon. Friend has succinctly pointed out. This is what everyone wants. This is why we have developed home dialysis provision and it is in this context that I want to deal with the specific points my hon. Friend has raised.
Home dialysis is essentially a hospital-based service, and the staff of the main centre where patients are trained retain ultimate clinical responsibility. It is still an expensive service, although not in hospital. The hospital has to meet the cost of providing, installing and maintaining the dialysing equipment for the patient's use in his home. The hospital meets the cost of supplying all the drugs, dressings, concentrates, etc., necessary for the patient's treatment. The hospital pays for the electricity used by the artificial kidney machine. The hospital also pays for the cost of installation and rental of a telephone if one is not already available to the patient. In all, it costs about £2,000 to install a patient on home dialysis and the running costs met by the hospital amount to about £1,500 per annum.
My hon. Friend might like to know that between 1966 and 1961 £1·3 million has been allocated for the capital cost of providing for dialysis in hospital and at home. Running costs total between £2 million and £2·5 million a year, roughly half of which is for hospital and half for home dialysis patients. I mention these figures because I think it is


important to put on record the not inconsiderable sums devoted to this service direct from the Exchequer—and I hope my hon. Friend will not be too hard on the Exchequer—to provide facilities for what is in effect a very small number of patients, and patients who, had they been similarly stricken a decade ago would certainly not be alive today.
Apart from this expenditure, other costs are met by local health authorities which, exercising their powers contained in Section 12 of the Health Services Act, 1968, are expected to provide for the patient a room large enough to contain the equipment, the necessary stores, dressings and fluids, etc., and the patient's bed. A sink with a good supply of water, adequate electrical fittings, a waterproof floor and washable walls and ceiling must also be provided. This provision is normally provided by adapting a room, or adding a room to the patient's existing home. Where this is not possible, a prefabricated unit to house the equipment, may be provided. In some cases, it is necessary to re-house the patient. The cost of a home adaptation can range from £200 to over £1,000. The cost of a prefabricated unit is over £1,350.
As with the other services provided under Section 12 of the Health Services and Public Health Act, 1968, the local health authority may make a charge to the patient for the adaptations carried out or the special unit provided. Not all authorities choose to do so, but where charges are made the patient's means must be taken into account. Authorities are expected to exercise their discretion in the matter of charges to avoid any undue hardship or worry to the patient and his family.
Whilst on the subject of costs and financial assistance, I should perhaps mention that all dialysis patients are exempt from prescription charges by virtue of the fact that they have a permanent fistula. They are also, of course, eligible for the family income supplement and are covered by the Supplementary Benefits Scheme governed by the Ministry of Social Security Act, 1966, which guarantees a minimum level of income to people aged 16 or over who are not in full-time work.
Under the general discretionary power given in paragraph 4(1)(a) of Schedule 2

to the 1966 Act, the Commission, when determining the weekly rate of supplementary benefit to which a person is entitled, can make allowance for any essential extra expenses the person may have—for example, the additional cost of a special diet, extra expenses of heating, and so on.
In the case of dialysis patients, special arrangements have been made to ensure that a person receiving supplementary benefit has sufficient income to provide for any special diet involved. Additionally, the extra heating needs of these patients can be provided for by means of a special allowance related to individual circumstances. The Commission cannot, however, help a haemodialysis patient who is, or whose husband is, in remunerative full-time work, because Section 8(1) of the Ministry of Social Security Act excludes such persons from receiving supplementary benefit.
It is clear from what my hon. Friend has said that in the particular case which has arisen in his constituency, the family concerned have benefited considerably from the financial help available to dialysis patients. If I understand my hon. Friend aright, he is now asking that an allowance should be made to meet the additional cost of electricity beyond that consumed by the dialysis machine itself and that some form of compensation should be made available to families whose standard of living is otherwise depressed as a result of relieving the National Health Service of the cost of providing hospital dialysis.
My hon. Friend lays some emphasis on the fact that patients on home dialysis are relieving the Health Service, and he uses this as a basis for pleading for further financial support for home dialysis patients. I must confess that I am rather surprised that he should see the position in this way. It is not true to say that the hospital service saves money by providing home instead of hospital dialysis. The truth is that any relief of resources of the National Health Service in one direction enables an enhanced or expanded service to be provided in some other direction. It is not a saving in the sense that the money is then put away in a kind of reserve. My hon. Friend will know that hospital authorities work on limited budgets—we would like them to be unlimited, but they are limited—and


to the extent to which funds are not available, services cannot be provided or have to be restricted. In practice the provision of home dialysis has simply meant that better use is made of the funds available for patients suffering from chronic renal failure and more patients can be treated—not that there has been any savings as such, in the sense of funds and resources kept idle and not applied. To the extent to which the use of funds is not optimised in this way the availability of facilities to other patients is consequentially reduced. To the extent to which the cost of provision for chronic renal failure is increased by one means or another, something else in the National Health Service must suffer—possibly, even, marginally, the candidate for home dialysis himself.
It would also appear from what my hon. Friend has said that he feels that the cost of treatment to the patient should be the same whether he is at home or in hospital. But I hope that on reflection he will agree that acceptance of this concept would introduce a new principle into the National Health Service which would have the most serious and widespread repercussions. We have already gone a long way in helping dialysis patients and I cannot readily see a case for treating them exceptionally to this extent.
In any event I do not think the question of costs to dialysis patients can be looked at in complete isolation. The advantages of home dialysis must be looked at in the round. As I said earlier, the great advantage of home dialysis, so far as the patient is concerned, and one of the main reasons why we have encouraged it, is that it enables patients to lead a more normal life. It is a good in itself. I do not think this facet can or should be underestimated.
Patients are able to dialyse themselves at times most convenient to their pattern of life. They are relieved of the necessity to travel to hospital two or three times a week and remain there overnight. They have a better chance of keeping in regular employment: 90 per cent. of patients on home dialysis return to work compared with only 78 per cent. on hospital dialysis. I am fully aware that some of these unfortunate people may suffer a loss in earning capacity as a result of their condition, but the extent of this is likely

to be less when they are maintained on home dialysis. Furtherfore, statistics show that patients on home dialysis have a significantly better chance of survival than those on hospital dialysis.
There is also much less chance of home dialysis patients contracting hepatitis and they present less risk to others. As I mentioned earlier, renal failure patients are particularly vulnerable to viral hepatitis and once infected may remain a continuing source of infection to other patients and the staffs of their dialysis unit. My hon. Friend will probably know that an expert committee under the chairmanship of Lord Rosenheim was set up in 1970 to examine this difficult problem. Its report, a copy of which is available in the House of Commons Library, makes numerous recommendations designed to minimise the risk of infection and to contain it should it arise. Among these is the recommendation that dialysis patients should be transferred as rapidly as possible from the hopsital unit to the home after suitable training has been given to them.
One of the most important objects of providing home dialysis is to enable the patient to be self-sufficient. With this in mind, patients are taught to prepare the equipment, handle the machinery and generally to acquire confidence in dialysing themselves. They are also taught how to deal with emergency situations. Normally a patient's dialysis is carried out at night while the patient and the household generally is asleep. There are built-in safety mechanisms to the machine, so that if anything untoward occurs the patient is awakened by an alarm system. It is nevertheless important for someone to be available in case of an emergency, and to this end arrangements are made for a relative living in the house to receive from the hospital the same instruction as it gives to the patient.
The extent of involvement of the relative should normally be very limited, and I must confess that I find it difficult to understand how, in the case of my hon. Friend's constituent, her parents can claim to be involved in her dialysis to the extent that my hon. Friend suggests.
This leads me to the suggestion of extending the scope of the attendance allowance. This allowance is now payable to those severely disabled people who need


a great deal of help from another person, both by day and at night. Many of those now in receipt of this allowance are bedridden or house-bound, or otherwise unable to lead an independent life in any way. We do, however, plan to extend the allowtnce to bring in broadly those people whose need for help from another person arises by day or at night.
But the medical requirements for the allowance are not, and under the extension will not be, related to a particular

disability or type of treatment. While it would be unfair to hold out any firm hope for my hon. Friend's constituent—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Tuesday evening, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty-six minutes past One o'clock.